{"id":20955,"date":"2015-11-01T23:30:04","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T23:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/turkey-election-ruling-akp-regains-majority\/"},"modified":"2015-11-01T23:29:52","modified_gmt":"2015-11-01T23:29:52","slug":"turkey-election-ruling-akp-regains-majority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/turkey-election-ruling-akp-regains-majority\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey election: Ruling AKP regains majority"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won a critical parliamentary election, regaining the majority it lost in June.}<\/p>\n

With almost all ballots counted, state-run Anadolu Agency said AKP had won 49.4% of the vote, with the main opposition CHP on 25.4%.<\/p>\n

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said voters had “shown that they prefer action and development to controversy”.<\/p>\n

The pro-Kurdish HDP crossed the 10% threshold needed to claim seats.<\/p>\n

The nationalist MHP will also take seats in Ankara.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Mr Erdogan said the electorate had “given proof of their strong desire for the unity and integrity” of Turkey.<\/p>\n

Polls had indicated the AKP would receive only between 40-43% of the vote, in line with how it fared in June when it lost its majority for the first time in 13 years.<\/p>\n

Attempts to form a coalition government after the June election failed.<\/p>\n

With almost all of the results counted, the AKP had won substantially more than the 276 seats needed to get a majority, allowing it to form a government on its own.<\/p>\n

However, it fell 14 seats short of the amount needed to call a referendum on changing the constitution and increasing the powers of the president, AKP founder Recep Tayyip Erdogan.<\/p>\n

And with 60 more seats, the government would have been able to bring in those changes without a referendum.<\/p>\n

The AKP’s opponents had said the vote was a chance to curb what it sees as the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of Mr Erdogan.<\/p>\n

After its shock landslide victory, the AK Party today begins the process of forming a new government, regaining the majority it lost in the election in June.<\/p>\n

It almost equalled its best ever result, swaying voters with its message of stability after weeks of violence with the PKK Kurdish rebels.<\/p>\n

There is now the hope that the two sides may be spurred to return to peace talks.<\/p>\n

The Turkish currency, the lira, has rallied after a shaky few months but an economic crisis could still loom.<\/p>\n

There are also fears that the political polarisation stoked by President Erdogan could deepen and a clampdown on free speech worsen as the AK Party feels emboldened.<\/p>\n

The election is over. But turbulent times lie ahead.<\/p>\n

Since elections in June, a ceasefire between the Turkish army and militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) collapsed after a suicide bombing in July by suspected Islamic State (IS) militants.<\/p>\n

The attack near the border with Syria killed more than 30 Kurds.<\/p>\n

Turkey then suffered its deadliest attack in its modern history when more than 100 people were killed after a peace rally in Ankara attended by mainly left-wing demonstrators, including many HDP supporters, was targeted by two suicide bombers.<\/p>\n

The government said they were linked to IS.<\/p>\n

Critics have accused Mr Erdogan of renewing violence to curb support for the HDP – something the government denies.<\/p>\n

One senior official from the HDP told Reuters the partial results were “disappointing”.<\/p>\n

The HDP won 10.7% of the vote – enough to give it 59 parliamentary seats, 21 fewer than it claimed in June’s election.<\/p>\n

The party cancelled rallies following the Ankara attack, and its co-chairman Selahettin Demirtas said on Sunday that it had not been “a fair or equal election”.<\/p>\n

Clashes were reported in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir as the results were being counted. Reuters said police had fired tear gas at protesters throwing stones.<\/p>\n

Last week, the offices of the opposition media group Koza-Ipek were raided by police after the government’s seizure of its assets.<\/p>\n

The raid is the latest in an operation to crack down on followers of US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen that has been under way since December 2013, when corruption allegations against allies of Mr Erdogan emerged.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won a critical parliamentary election, regaining the majority it lost in June.} With almost all ballots counted, state-run Anadolu Agency said AKP had won 49.4% of the vote, with the main opposition CHP on 25.4%. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said voters had “shown that they prefer action […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000069956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-20955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000069956,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20955.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20955.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20955.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20955.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20955.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton20955.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000069956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20955"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=20955"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=20955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}