Erdogan's AKP "Wins" Snap Election-Successful Challenge Unlikely

Image Courtesy: wikipedia.org

The snap election results in Turkey are somewhat surprising and strongly diverge from recent opinion polls. And the result will, as predicted, not check Erdogan. This snap election than "corrected" the June vote in which the AKP had lost its former majority.

With 98% of the vote counted the announced preliminary result is about

AKP 50%

CHP 25%

MHP 12%

HDP 10%

With this count Erdogan's AKP would have some 317 seats, 13 less than the 330 needed for constitution changing supermajority. But should the lefty/Kurdish HDP fall, by whatever means, under 10% its seats would practically go to the AKP and a supermajority would be likely.

But the election commission has now, for unexplained reasons, shut down its website and we do not get updated results. Pre-election polling, which was quite to the point in the June election, is now off by 6 to 8%. No pollster predicted the AKP above 44%.

We can therefor expect that many people will call this a fraudulent election. It may well have been one. Erdogan certainly does not refrain from playing dirty. But do not expect much success for any challenge. The police, prosecutors, and courts are all under tight AKP control. Internationally Erdogan is getting a lot of support from "western" states.

Just two day before the vote the U.S. announced that it approved long held back ‘smart bomb’ sale to Turkey. The EU held back a report critical on political and human rights in Turkey. Just twelve days ago Merkel visited for a photo op on the Sultan's throne and offered billions for Turkey to stop sending migrants to northern Europe. There was little criticism of Erdogan for seizing the Koza-İpek Group and the various media channels it owns. These "western" measure were, all together, very supportive for Erdogan and likely brought him some additional voters. So do not expect any criticism from these sides even if some evidence of vote manipulation emerges. The fix is now in.

The larger question though is what does this mean for Turkey? What does it mean for the civil war in Turkey against the Kurds? And what does this mean for the Jihadi war on Syria that Erdogan and others are waging?

Courtesy: Moon Of Alabama

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