Alwaght | News & Analysis Website

Alwaght- Turkey’s parliamentary election held on June 17 and its results showed that the Islamist movement in Turkey is at the center of people's attention, and is the first option for Turkish Muslim people. It also showed that the Islamist ‘Justice and Development party’ (AKP) pays the cost of its strategic mistakes in both domestic and international arenas. There are some important points about the political future of Turkey, some of which are as follows:
1. Members and leaders of the AKP believed that the parliamentary election should have paved the way for changing the Turkey's parliamentary system to a presidential one, and this way Turkey would have enjoyed more leadership authority and less domestic tensions to direct the rapid developments in the region in favor of Turkey's regional domination. From this perspective, not only Erdogan's party, but also the Turkish nation has been suspended and even has taken a significant step backwards. Undoubtedly, Turkey needed a housecleaning, so that it can improve its passive conditions, but for whatever reasons, it did not happen.
On the other hand, a stronger Turkey enjoying a wise leadership, could have helped to solve many complex issues in the region, and have an effective role in addressing many intrigues in the Muslim world. However, the parliamentary election held on June 17 did not help; meanwhile, the ‘absence of a wise leadership’ was seen as a significant obstacle which has not been surmounted.
2. The election results and the relative growth of the ethnic groups’ share of vote show that the country is implicitly affected by major changes taking place around Turkey. Given the results of the parliamentary election held on June 17, and considering the increased voter turnout and an increase in ethnic groups’ share of vote, it must be regarded a sign of ‘underlying changes’ that not only could shape the political situation, but also could affect the country's security. Therefore, turkey's neighboring countries should closely monitor the developments in Turkey; otherwise they might face a situation which put their interests and national security at risk.  
3. With regard to the domestic situation in Turkey and the events that took place in recent years in this country, we can infer that over the last years, Erdogan has disputed with religious spectrums rather than pursuing the unity of the Islamist movements. Although, Erdogan follows the way of ‘Necmettin Erbakan’, the founding father of Turkish Islamism, he is just trying to remove the Islamists rather than facilitating their participation or asking them to help him. Dispute with Islamist National Health Party, headed by Rajaee Kotan shows Erdogan's efforts to direct the Islamist trends in the AKP that does not agree with ‘wise thinking’ at political arena. Erdogan could have been the greatest symbol of Islamist and justice seeking movements in Turkey; however, when he repels the Islamist movements he downgrades his government to a political party that regards social movements a tool and does not believe in their genuineness. From this perspective, Erdogan's party, is just facing the ‘leadership crisis’ rather than ‘vote crisis’. If AKP did not suffer from leadership crisis, it would be able to well govern Turkey, with about 41 percent of the votes and 47 percent of the seats in the parliament.
4. Although the AKP government had adopted the strategy of ‘addressing the issues with neighbors’ and this meant fundamental changes in Turkish foreign policy, this rational approach did not last and was subject to fundamental changes over the last 5 years. The first result of this change was the isolation of Turkey in its region. Currently, five years after abandoning the policy of ‘addressing the issues with neighbors’ Turkey does not have firm and friendly relations with any of its neighbors.  A review of Ankara’s current bilateral and multilateral relations with Iraq, Syria, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Armenia verifies the validity of the claim. Making unexpected changes in the foreign policy of Turkey, AKP strategists particularly ‘Ahmet Davutoglu’ have depicted AKP as a novice and inexperienced government, causing much criticism from Turkey's elites. For example, in Turkey, no party other than the AKP supported the interventionist policy in Syria and even within that party some figures such as ‘Abdullah Gul’ strongly criticized the policy. Turkey could have played a key role in addressing the issues and stabilizing the situation in Syria to achieve huge profits. Policy of arousing hostility against neighbors, instituted by Davutoglu, deeply split the Turkish society and partially changed the dualism of ‘justice and discrimination’ and ‘health and corruption’ into ‘dictatorship and political reform’.
5. In this election, approximately 53.5 million people were eligible to vote, and about 46 million people, about 86 percent of the eligible voters turned out for the election. According to Turkey’s electoral law, only those parties are allowed to enter the Parliament that are able to gain at least ten percent of the votes. The votes of those parties that fail to win 10 percent of votes are distributed in favor of wining parties. AKP won 18.8 million votes, namely less than 41 percent of votes, 258 parliament seats or about 47% of parliament seats. The other three parties each have won between 80 and 132 seats, they have gained about 25 million votes, more than 54 percent of the votes and 292 seats. However, given the ideological differences between the third place party, Nationalist Movement Party, and the fourth place party, the People’s Democratic Party, these parties are unlikely to enter coalition with AKP. Turkey is currently in a dilemma. The AKP is more likely to enter a coalition with the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party. Otherwise, Turkey should enter another round of elections, in which nothing new is expected to happen, as a limited number of people have not turned out for the election and no significant difference is likely to happen in the second round of election. We may conclude that AKP has just one way ahead; that is to enter coalition with one of the relatively successful parties. In summary, in this election about 86 percent of people turned out for the election, 4 percent higher than last election; opposition parties achieved downgrading the AKP share of votes by 20 percent compared to the last parliamentary elections in 2011. Its vote share fell from 49 to 41 percent and has lost about 13 percent of its seats. Therefore, this election has lessons for AKP to learn, rather than calling its qualifications into question.
6. Over the past 10 years, Erdogan and his party have largely been locked in domestic disputes. Apart from the deep split between the AKP and Islamist groups, Ankara has not developed friendly relationships with the Alevis and Kurds over the last five to ten years rather has provoked some angry clashes. For example, the Gezi park protests over naming a bridge after Yavuz Sultan Selim, an Ottoman sultan, showing the conflict of Turkish government with the Alevis and Kurds, is an instance of the government’s measures in addressing the domestic issues. In the meantime, one of the recent strategic mistakes of Erdogan's team, especially Ahmet Davutoglu was that their policies and symbols (such as naming the Istanbul Bridge, or transferring the body of the Ottoman king into Turkey) are well indicative of his Ottomanism tendencies. Nevertheless, Ottomanism is unwelcome in both Turkey and in the region, mainly because of the Ottomans’ blatant discrimination against the Arabs. As all other three parties, placed second to fourth, were also against Ottomanism, and gained a lot of votes with the slogan. Ottomanism of Ahmet Davutoglu has undoubtedly delivered a blow against AKP and has changed the image of AKP from a revolutionary party to a reactionary one.