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Istanbul (Turkey) — The Justice and Development Party (AK party) is set to lead Turkey alone once again after a five-month break, easily regaining its parliamentary majority in what Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called a victory for democracy. With nearly all of the votes counted, the ruling party was leading Sunday’s general elections with 49.4 percent of the vote.
The AK party was followed by the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 25.4 of the votes, far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) with 11.9 percent and the pro-Kurdish left-wing Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) with 10.7 percent.
With these results, AK party is predicted to claim 316 seats in the 550-seat parliament, easily enough to win a majority government on its own. It was chased by the CHP with 134 seats, HDP with 59 seats and MHP with 41 seats. Parties need to secure 276 seats to govern the country alone.
Addressing AK party supporters in his hometown Konya as the results became clear, prime minister and AK party leader, Ahmet Davutoglu, said that all 78 million people of Turkey would be embraced, whether or not they voted for the party.
“We are here to plant seeds of love. There’s no rival or enemy on this land. There is only affection,” he said. He also said that there were no losers in the elections, sending a message to voters who did not vote for the AK party. “Nobody should get into a psychology of defeat. Our democracy has won,” he said.
The polls were held amid instability spilling over to Turkey from neighbouring Syria and renewed tensions over the 30-year-old Kurdish conflict. Three bomb attacks in recent months on political and activist rallies across Turkey, blamed on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), shocked the Turkish public, killing 139 people.
A bomb explosion in October at a peace rally in the capital, Ankara, killed 102 people. The violence marked the worst such attack in the country’s modern history.
Meanwhile, an escalating conflict with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group fighting for more rights for Turkey’s ethnic Kurds, has killed scores of Turkish soldiers since a ceasefire and talks between the sides broke down in July.
Amid this atmosphere, the currency of the state, the Turkish lira, has massively depreciated, threatening the stability of the economy. — AFP
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