Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist and Islamist political party pulled off a stunning victory in the nation’s snap election Sunday, winning enough seats to again secure dominance over parliament just five months after losing its long-held majority.
The win marks the latest twist in political tumult that has gripped Turkey since June, when Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) refused to join a power-sharing coalition with the nation’s main opposition party and the president instead called a second election to be held.
With preliminary results on Sunday night showing the AKP this time winning 316 of the parliament’s 550 seats, analysts said the 61-year-old Mr. Erdogan — in power since 2003 — can proceed with his yearslong push to expand his authority over Turkey.
It’s an authority that was challenged when a pro-Kurdish political party, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), had for the first time won enough votes to secure a small number of parliamentary seats in June.
The months since have seen Mr. Erdogan and his allies within the government’s security apparatus accused of cracking down on opposition media — while also engaging in a campaign to inflame Kurdish unrest in the hope that it would tarnish the HDP, and stoke pro-nationalist support for the AKP ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Division over the so-called “Kurdish question” has festered for decades, with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) — a group listed by Washington as a terrorist organization — waging an on-again, off-again insurgency against Ankara, while Turkish fighter jets pound the group’s bases in northern Iraq.
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Since June, the AKP has been linking Kurds to a wave of recent terrorist incidents, despite evidence that the incidents were more likely carried out by Islamic State terrorists based in Syria and Iraq.
Mr. Erdogan, declaring that only he and his loyal Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu could guarantee security in Turkey, crisscrossed the nation ahead of Sunday’s vote with the message: “It’s me or chaos.”
Then came the Oct. 10 Ankara terrorist attacks, in which suicide bombers killed more than 100 people at a rally of pro-Kurdish and labor activists in the Turkish capital. The Erdogan government responded by claiming it had apprehended suspects with ties to both the Islamic State and Kurdish rebels.
The claim prompted skepticism among critics, but appears to have worked.
Early returns on Sunday night suggested Mr. Erdogan’s AKP had picked up millions of votes at the expense of HDP, while Turkey’s main secularist opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) was projected to come away with roughly the same number it had won in June.
Supporters at the AKP’s Ankara and Istanbul headquarters waived flags in rapturous celebrations. Crowds outside Mr. Erdogan’s residence shouted “Turkey is proud of you.”
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Kurdish political leaders were incensed, claiming they had faced violence and unfair election conditions since their surprise gains in June. The HDP’s co-chairman Selahattin Demirtas said the party had been forced to cancel election rallies and that television stations gave HDP representatives little airtime amid AKP attacks tying the party to the terrorist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
“There wasn’t a fair or equal election,” he said. “We were not able to lead an election campaign, we tried to protect our people against attacks.”
Clashes erupted briefly on Sunday night between police and protesters in the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.
Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman described the results as “surprising and potentially quite worrisome.”
“Turkey has had a tradition of free and fair elections. The circumstances of today’s election may call that into question,” Mr. Edelman, a senior adviser to the Turkey program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Sunday night.
“Even if it turns out that the election was not marred by cheating it was hardly a fair election given the violence, civil tension, press blackouts and the broader suppression of independent media,” he said. “The result shows that even with its restored governing majority the AKP regime presides over a deeply divided country.”
“If the President and Prime Minister govern as if they have a broad social consensus at their back and if the ethnic Kurdish population feel disenfranchised by the final results the country will move closer to a dangerous abyss of civil strife.”
• This article was based in part on wire-service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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