Turkey's Nov. 1 snap elections ended with a result that almost no one expected: a crushing, fourth consecutive victory for the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has now been in power since 2002. The party won 49.4% of the vote, a major increase over the 40.9% it won in the previous elections, held June 7. The AKP has a comfortable majority in the parliament, holding 316 of the 550 seats. It now has enough power to form a government on its own, avoiding coalition scenarios for the next four years. The final seat count, however, fell short of giving the AKP the chance to amend the constitution on its own, which requires at least 330 seats.
How did the AKP pull off such a major victory, defying the predictions of almost all polling companies and political observers? I had predicted “some increase in the AKP votes,” but nothing this major. To understand what happened, one has to look at what changed in Turkey during the past five months, since the previous elections.
The first major change was an upsurge in terrorism, by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Islamic State, and an accompanying sense of diminishing security. The second change was a decline in the economy, in particular a surge by the US dollar at the expense of the Turkish lira. Many critics, in the Turkish opposition as well as the Western media, blamed the AKP government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for both of these problems. Many Turks, however, viewed things to the contrary. To them, these problems had been caused by the absence of a strong AKP government since June 7. The 13 stable years Turkey experienced under AKP has helped create a longing for that same stability under yet another strong AKP government.
Meanwhile, two opposition parties faced major problems in the past few months, leading to a significant decline in votes for them. The problem for the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was Devlet Bahceli, its leader. Bahceli disillusioned a large number of MHP voters by bluntly rejecting every coalition option after the June elections and offering nothing more than hawkishness against Kurdish nationalists. Hence, the MHP turned out to be the biggest loser in the election, having won 16.4% of the vote (80 seats) in June, but only 11.9% (40 seats) in November. It is safe to assume that almost all of the MHP's lost votes went to the AKP.
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