Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Turkey Votes
According to initial results, a huge number of voters changed their minds at the last minute and decided to vote for the AKP, despite what they said to pollsters. Either this is a huge upset, a sign of fraud, or the early results are way off. With 50 percent counted, the projection is that the AKP will have 331 seats in parliament — enough for single party rule, and to effect constitutional reforms by taking them to a referendum.
The results so far may be skewed because the earliest results are from the east, where the AKP is stronger. CHP and MHP are stronger in the West.
It’s still too early for post-mortems or to say what this means. It will be a long night for those with an interest in Turkey. But right now, it looks like this:
So the all was for naught then. Edrogan wins in the end. I assume that the Kurds still need 10 percent to get seats in parliament.
From a friend:
“The pro-Kurdish HDP has now dropped to below the critical 10% level. It may recover but on current trends with 83% of the votes counted, this looks a little unlikely.
So the next Parliament will have a two thirds majority for the AKP (around 371 seats out of 550) and it will be able to do something it was unable to ever since it came to power in 2002.
And there will be no “pro-Kurdish” deputies in the next parliament. Selahattin Demirtaş is not just politically destroyed. He will face several prosecutions for terrorism without any parliamentary immunity.
And Europe, if one counts Turkey as Europe, could have its first fully fledged non-Communist dictatorship, since the fall of Franco and Salazar. A radical Islamist one.”
Pre-election polls, for comparison:
We keep hearing how polls are way off in this country. It makes one wonder if our reliance on polls is going down the tubes. The implications are not only bad for the Kurds but also for other countries, like Israel. Like they don’t have enough troubles.
Islamic democracy, what could go wrong? Well when things go wrong we can always fall back on, “bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to spread sharia.”
If or rather when the AKP enacts its dictatorial agenda what will Europe do in response. I assume this will be the end of Turkey trying to get into the EU. The question I have is will the European power exert any pressure on the AKP to keep them from doing this? Do they actually have any leverage? Also more troubling to ponder is, will this mean that the Kurds will just launch a full rebellion now if the AKP tries to consolidate its power in this manner. I don’t see what would stop because there is clearly no way to use the political process to make any head way as this whole election proves.
With Iraq and Syria in turmoil the Kurds have a lot of room to maneuver outside of Turkey. Could the various groups outside of Turkey and inside of it unite in a war against Turkey?
Also who wants to bet that this will not be covered in the US media to any extent until it blows up, and then everyone will be asking how did this come about so unexpectedly.
You would be opposed to allowing in Kurds fleeing Turkey, or cosmopolitan Istanbulers. Cause it sounds like if you like sharia, the AKP might just be the thing for you, why leave?
How did these pollsters perform last time out? If they got it right, or roughly so, in the previous election, but are way off this time, then the issue of fraud should be considered. Why do I think there will be no independent assessment of how honest the ballots were? Tim
“It’s still too early for post-mortems or to say what this means.”
Let’s see, eternal adversary Russia moving in on the other border, Iran’s soldiers to the south, Russian planes over Turkey, American Patriot missiles withdrawn, Hezbollah ramping up fighters, ISIS and al Qaeda banging away, a personal and political feud with Assad, Kurds resisting Ankara, bombs in the town square blowing up Kurds, America not sure what to do, NATO incapable of doing much but claim to be ready, and 12 sided civil war waging in earshot, …. could it be the Turkish voter just “went to ground” where it is safest?
Steady. Let’s just wait and see. No need to get anxious yet.
If they call themselves Muslims, we will be buying future trouble. I am not interested in bringing people from “supremacist” groups into the country. By some definitions Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was cosmopolitan. He was at ease in many cultures. He lived in the Philippines, in Europe and in the Unites States. He even attended a historically Black University. Something was wrong though and his traveling experiences never had much effect on his core beliefs. Regarding Kurds, they are victims of a geography and history that doesn’t favor them having a country anytime soon. As Muslims I think they would still be trouble.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has declared victory for the AKP according to the Beeb.
Claire & All,
The latest results are with 95% reporting are showing a slightly better outcome.
The Kurds still hit their 10% but just barely.
Regards,
Jim
I’ll let Al say it…
Constantinople
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGdXbwl5QxA&feature=youtu.be
Tja, so was. Die Welt is calling this a betrayal of democracy. If I have time I will provide a brief translation of their editorial, the title of which is “Ein schwarzer Tag fuer die Tuerkei.”
Here are the important paragraphs from the editorial in Die Welt, translated for the benefit of the non-German speaking Ricochetti (arme Seelen, die sie sind):
One might well wish that Turkey were a somewhat functional democracy with a reliable rule of law. Then one could, as a good supporter of democracy, congratual the conservative Islamic on its ever-more apparent electoral victory.
But one cannot. Because in a somewhat functional democracy, a president of the nation would not exceed the constitutional authority vested in him to this degree.
They’re still talking about Turkey, right?
From Michael Koplow, and I agree:
I’m disappointed, but conflict with an “enemy” often results in a political bounce for a leader.
(Indira Gandhi/1971 Bangladesh War, Thatcher/Falklands, GW Bush/9-11, Modi/Gujarat 2002.)
The Army resuming the conflict with the PKK effectively campaigned for the AKP.
Eventually, I hope, people get wise to it – but it might be a process that has to be undergone? What I don’t understand is why the MHP’s vote share decreased at the same time.
Claire,
Should we expect Erdrogan to not only continue but to intensify his war against the Kurds now? It seems he has a mandate to do so. What internal limitation is there now on the Turks invading northern Syria to create a “buffer zone?”
He may well resume the peace process. The war had an electoral purpose; it’s been served; no reason to continue it.
Somehow, those tiki lawn torches just don’t have the same effect. The angry mob ain’t what it used to be.
Yes.
Not if you systematically rub out everything else you need to be a functional multi-party democracy. If he succeeds in changing the constitution, I think we can say goodbye to many of the elements of Turkish democracy that would make an electoral challenge possible at all. Hope not, but so far being pessimistic about the direction this is going hasn’t once served me poorly. (NB: They took 49.4 percent of the vote, so 315 seats in the 550-member parliament, according to results with almost all ballots counted. To change the constitution to a the “presidential” system Erdoğan wants– which would not be at all what we mean by that, but rather a pure elected dictatorship — the AKP needed to win 367 seats to do it by fiat, and 330 to do it by a referendum. Now they’d need to find 15 opposition MPs to vote with them, which is not highly likely, but not impossible.
Because if you’re going to vote for the Kurd-hating nationalists, why vote for the small, ineffective party, possibly even wasting your vote if they don’t pass the threshold, when you can have the AKP? He completely stole their Kurd-hating nationalist thunder. And managed to steal votes from the HDP at the same time by basically promising them that if they didn’t vote for them, he’d kill them. A savvy politician, I must say.
I haven’t in my own mind ruled out fraud, although no one seems to think it’s very likely. The disjunct between all the polls and the results is huge, though; and I certainly don’t think any moral scruple would keep them from committing fraud. Oy Ve Otesi (a grass-roots election-monitoring body) is going to triple-check the votes; if there’s any sign of fraud, I do trust them to find and report it (and then be arrested for doing so, but at least we’ll know).
I guess on the bright side, with the election over and resolved, we’ll probably see a sharp decline in the violence and the extreme rhetoric, which might keep the country from marching off the edge to outright civil war. Perhaps after a few years of calm Turkey can begin to think about democracy again; for now, a single-party dictatorship may genuinely be better for ordinary Turkish people who didn’t want to be caught in that crossfire. Indeed, that’s what 49.4 percent of them seem to have told us. And I can’t judge them harshly for it; given what they’ve seen happen to their neighbors — and given that they certainly know there’s no way out of Turkey — it’s a reasonable calculation. The reason competitive authoritarianism along the Putin model works is that it’s not like the old-fashioned authoritarianism in which everyone suffers. If you back the authoritarian, you’re handsomely rewarded. You have to have a hell of an ideological commitment to liberal democracy to keep fighting for it after that seeing everyone who tries get thrown in jail or killed, over and over, this over a period of decades, and knowing that you’re totally isolated: The US won’t say a word, and neither will Europe. Never in Turkish history has anyone fought the state and won. So in a way, it’s a totally rational survival strategy.
Could be that the good news is: no fraud.
But then the bad news is also: no fraud.
If this dictatorship of the majority comes to pass:
What form will resistance and opposition to one party rule take, in your opinion, if electoral pathways for meaningful dissent are cut off? Because there is always opposition, it’s just a matter of what format it adopts.
Is it likely to be Marxist/Leftist of some sort?
I can’t think of any other available type (Islamist? taken; Nationalist? taken) that could be adopted, and that’s dispiriting.
Or is there any appetite in Turkey for the hyper-Islamism of ISIS?
Zafar:
Claire Berlinski, Ed.:I haven’t in my own mind ruled out fraud, although no one seems to think it’s very likely.
Could be that the good news is: no fraud.
I don’t know. YSK website down, with no explanation. In five months, AKP gained roughly 4.5 million votes. MHP lost 1.9 million; & HDP lost 1.0 million. HDP drops 8 percentage in its stronghold. Faster than normal results reporting. Pollsters were breathtakingly accurate in June elections. This time, they all got it wrong in more or less the same way. So either all public polls wildly off by any measure, or fraud.
But before anyone says, “Well, fraud, obviously” — pollsters in Turkey are notoriously corrupt and incompetent.
I don’t know. There have already been riots in Diyarbakir outside the HDP headquarters. Several hours of clashes last night, apparently.
There will be no push-back from anyone in the West if he crushes any remaining dissent; Merkel has more or less explicitly made a deal — keep the refugees on your side of the border, and we’ll never say another word about human rights in Turkey; the US, likewise — let us use Incirlik and you can do whatever you want at home.
Short sighted, of course.
I don’t think that could happen unless he goes full-on Assad. I don’t think that’s in the works; he’s a much more subtle operator than that.
I had thought for a minute they were talking about the US. But no, they are still talking about Turkey.
This is why we need to remain calm.
Yes, when there is civil disorder, millions of refugees from next door, a civil war raging nearby, other nation’s joining the fight, the US backing Kurdish fighters on the border and pulling out Patriot missile batteries, NATO talking
and at the ready,and extreme terrorist groups operating freely, things turn authoritarian.Steady. . . Watch. Learn. This is very complex.
For those following this closely, I’m watching this right now …
The OSCE committee has pronounced the elections free, but not fair.
Why is Turkey in the European Union? Why is Turkey in NATO? Obviously it doesn’t hold western values, nor am I confident it stands against Islamism.
Not in the EU
Just looked it up. They are some sort of “associate member,” whatever that means. But you’re right, they’re not a full member.