Erdogan strengthens position after landslide election victory

Turkey is digesting the landslide win by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in last Sunday’s (22 July) general elections.

It was only the second time in Turkish history that a ruling party has been re-elected with a landslide win - the first being in 1954.

The AKP’s resounding victory saw its share of the votes rise to almost 47% from its 34% in 2002. The opposition Republican People’s Party got 20% and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MPH) got 14%, while 26 independent, mostly Kurdish, candidates secured seats in the parliament, circumventing the problem for Kurdish parties of getting over the 10% barrier to enter parliament.

Professor Atila Eralp, of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, called it an "incredible" victory. "I would say that the electorate voted for stability - people talked of nationalism [in the campaign] but the public voted for the centre, for a more international Turkey," he said.

Cengiz Aktar, an Istanbul-based academic and commentator, agreed: "People voted for the less nationalist of the political parties, ie, the AKP. These guys represent today’s Turkey…they are worldly, they like making money and on the other hand they are conservative which fits the majority of Turks."

The elections were called early, after a crisis erupted in April over the AKP’s attempts to elect then-foreign minister Abdullah Gül as president. The move was rejected by secular opposition parties because of his Islamist leanings and by the military establishment, which posted warnings on the internet about what they saw as AKP’s threats to secularism.

Aktar said that "the military e-ultimatum probably enhanced the AKP vote by 10-15%. People are saying they are sick and tired of seeing those military interventions".

The AKP will have a strong majority in the new parliament, to convene in August, with about 340 out of 550 seats. But it will not have the two-thirds majority necessary to elect a new speaker of the parliament nor to elect a new president.

Eralp said that the first critical test for the new government would be electing a new president without provoking a renewed crisis. He added that although strong from its election victory, "the AKP has got to be more moderate".

Another top priority will be dealing with north Iraq and Turkey’s own restless south-east, two areas with a strong ethnic Kurdish population. "The government will have to sit and talk with the Iraqis and keep military intervention in check," Aktar said.

Eralp welcomed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strong promise, on election night, of a renewed commitment to the EU accession process but added that he doubted that new reforms could start before October - rather late to influence this year’s progress report by the European Commission, which is expected in November.

But Aktar said the ball was now in the EU’s court: "Turkey has done its job. It’s now up to the EU…to give a real signal to Turkey, and to reassert Turkey’s candidacy and the EU-Turkey relationship."

Turkey is digesting the landslide win by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in last Sunday’s (22 July) general elections.