The Turkish election: what does it mean?

I apologise for not having written anything recently. My excuse is that I travelled to the other side of the world, from New Zealand to England. I’ve adjusted to the time zone now. While travelling, Turkey held its general election.

While in Dubai, I met a number of people who had nothing but bad things to say about Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yet he keeps winning elections. Why is that? Here’s a take on things from Kemal Kirisci, from the Brookings Institute.

 Yesterday’s election in Turkey—which saw a remarkable 87 percent turnout—yielded a victory for strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This, despite a surprisingly strong opposition challenge that he had not seen before. Unless Erdoğan addresses Turkey’s mounting domestic and foreign policy problems, he and his party will be vulnerable at the local elections in March 2019. To truly sustain his victory, he will need to tone down his populistic rhetoric and cooperate with a parliament that is now much more diverse.

The numbers

According to unofficial results as of writing, Erdoğan received 52.5 percent of the vote—an outright victory, bucking opinion polls that predicted a run-off—with opposition candidate Muharrem İnce receiving 30.6 percent. However, Erdoğan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) fell short of expectations with 42.5 percent of the vote, regressing by more than 7 points since November 2015. This translates to 295 seats for the AKP in the parliament, short of the 301 needed for a majority. AKP’s ally the MHP (Nationalist Action Party) received 11.1 percent of the vote and obtained 49 seats in parliament, compensating somewhat for AKP’s poor performance.

On the opposition side, the CHP (People’s Republican Party) won 22.6 percent, a performance that did not meet predictions and fell short of the 25 percent CHP won in the November 2015 elections. Its electoral ally, the newly formed İyi (Good) party, led by Meral Akşener, won an impressive 10 percent of the vote in its first-ever election. These two parties will have 146 and 43 seats in parliament, respectively. The mostly Kurdish HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) contested the elections on its own, and managed to pass the 10 percent threshold for entering parliament, winning 11.7 percent of the vote (67 seats).

The election followed a short but intense campaign that took place under the emergency rule, still in effect after the July 2016 coup attempt. While the outgoing prime minister proudly announced that the election was transparent enough to be a model for other countries, the atmosphere was hardly conducive to a level playing field, considering the opposition’s limited access to the media and state resources. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which has monitored elections in Turkey, has reported irregularities in past elections, and expressed similar concern ahead of this vote. It will be interesting to see if the new parliament might address these problems and take action to ensure that Turkey’s next elections are, in fact, free and fair.