TurkeyMajor defeat for Erdogan as Islamist ruling party loses majority

Published 8 June 2015

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was not on the ballot in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, but his ambitious agenda for Turkey was – and he lost big. The losses of his Islamist Justice and Development party, or AKP, were the most significant and painful losses in the party’s 20-year history – and the first losses for Erdogan since he emerged in 2002 to dominate the Turkish political scene. Erdogan openly proclaimed that the goal of AKP in Sunday’s election was to win at least 66 percent of the seats in parliament — the number required to make changes to the Turkish constitution. The AKP now has nearly 50 percent of the seats in parliament, short of the constitution-changing threshold. The Turkish voters, however, soundly rejected Erdogan’s ambitious agenda: Not only did the AKP not win the required majority – the party actually lost power. With 99 percent of the votes counted, the AKP had won 41 percent of the vote, down from the 49 percent it won in the last national election in 2011. It will now have only 258 seats in Turkey’s Parliament, compared with the 327 seats it has in the outgoing parliament. There are regional implications for the Erdogan and AKP loses: On Syria, Libya, and other regional issues, a subdued Erdogan and a tamer AKP may be less of an obstacle to more harmony and greater coordination among the key Sunni states in the Middle East, which is good news for the twin efforts to contain Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions and weaken Iran’s allies, on the one hand, and defeat the nihilistic forces of jihadist Islamist extremism, on the other hand.

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was not on the ballot in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, but his ambitious agenda for Turkey was – and he lost big.

The losses of his Islamist Justice and Development party, or AKP, were the most significant and painful losses in the party’s 20-year history – and the first losses for Erdogan since he emerged in 2002 to dominate the Turkish political scene.

Erdogan openly proclaimed that the goal of AKP in Sunday’s election was to win at least 66 percent of the seats in parliament — the number required to make changes to the Turkish constitution. The AKP now has nearly 50 percent of the seats in parliament, short of the constitution-changing threshold. The AKP thus cannot change the constitution on its own, and it has failed to persuade smaller parties to join it in this effort.

Hence Erdogan’s call to the Turkish people to give his AKP the 66 percent needed for a unilateral change of the constitution – changes, he said, which would allow him to dismantle the framework of the republic which Kemal Ataturk created nearly 100 years ago.

The Turkish voters, however, soundly rejected Erdogan’s ambitious agenda: Not only did the AKP not win the required majority – the party actually lost power.

With 99 percent of the votes counted, the AKP had won 41 percent of the vote, down from the 49 percent it won in the last national election in 2011. It will now have only 258 seats in Turkey’s Parliament, compared with the 327 seats it has in the outgoing parliament (these numbers may change slightly when all votes are counted). For the ruling AKP to remake the constitution, it would have had to increase the number of its seats in parliament from the current 327 seats to 367 seats. Instead, it will have 258 seats.

The result, with 99 percent of the votes in:

  • The AKP, with its 41 percent of the vote
  • The traditional opposition, the secular, free-market-oriented Republican People’s party (CHP) with 25 percent
  • The right-wing, populist Nationalist Movement party (MHP) with 16.5 percent
  • The pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) with a surprising 12.5 percent