Erdogan and Turkey’s morning after

He is back.

 

Having won yet another election while displaying yet more of the impulse, gamble and victory that have been his remarkable career’s hallmarks, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s supporters were dancing Sunday night like there was no tomorrow.

 

Alas, when the dust settles, the dancers will learn that despite their Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) political reprieve, there indeed is no tomorrow for the country that has been maneuvered into intractable foreign conflict and internal strife.

 

The outspoken Erdogan did not technically run in this poll, where Turkey elected its parliament. Politically, however, the vote was over the future of the social, cultural, and political revolution he has been leading since becoming prime minister in 2003, a position he held until becoming president last year.

 

The Islamists’ fourth straight general-election victory makes it plain that the revolution will continue, and in earnest, considering the AKP’s restoration of the majority it lost last spring when it won only 40 percent of the legislature.

 

That setback was attributed to the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party’s (HDP) passage of the 10% electoral threshold, which landed in their bosom one-tenth of parliament.

 

Other political systems faced with similar situations understood such electoral statements as a call for dialogue and compromise. That, for instance, is what happened in Britain in 2010, when its voters gave no party an absolute majority, and the politicians in turn created a coalition between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. That is also what happened in Israel in 1984, when the voters gave no bloc a majority, and the politicians created a unity government.

 

Read More: Erdogan and Turkey’s morning after – Middle East – Jerusalem Post