Turkish politics no longer one-man show
Turkey's June 7 parliamentary elections signaled a resounding loss for the ruling Justice and Development Party, so what are its options?
The followers of Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse should not have been surprised by the developments in the aftermath of Turkey’s June 7 parliamentary elections. We had accurately predicted that Turkey would head toward a period of uncertainty.
The pivotal importance of the elections rested on two main pillars: whether the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) would manage to pass the world's highest, undemocratic national 10% threshold; and whether the HDP’s success would cost the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) its parliamentary majority, which it has enjoyed since 2002.
The elections were important not merely due to their determining the distribution of seats in the next parliament. They also signaled whether Turkey would be drifting toward an authoritarian one-man rule under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through an executive presidency.
Any assessment disregarding these essential yardsticks would be wrong and misleading. This was the case, for instance, with Michael J. Koplow’s recent Foreign Affairs article.
