Election in Turkey

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Here are the numbers from the parliamentary election:

The stealth Islamist party, Justice and Development (AKP), received almost exactly 50 percent of the vote. Under the Turkish system this will give it 325 members of parliament, or about 60 percent of the seats.

On the opposition side the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) got about 26 percent of the vote and 135 seats. The right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) took 13 percent giving it 54 seats. There are also 36 independents, all of them Kurdish communalists. Eleven parties didn’t make the minimum ten percent barrier (they received only about 1 percent or less each).

Now is this good or bad?

The AKP won 363 seats with a bit over 34 percent of the vote in 2002; 341 seats with 46.58 percent of the vote in 2007; and 325 seats with almost 50 percent of the vote in 2011.

In statistical terms, the AKP lost 6 MP’s despite getting 5 million more votes, the MHP lost 18 MP’s despite tallying half a million more votes while the CHP gained 33 seats adding 3.5 million votes. On paper, then, while the AKP stays in power, it is very slightly weaker than before.

As you can see above the AKP’s percentage of voters keeps rising. The AKP increased voter support more than any other party and will be in power for four — and perhaps many more — years, infiltrating institutions, producing a new constitution, altering Turkish foreign policy and so on.

The only thing AKP did not get the two-thirds of the seats, 357, that would let it pretty much write Turkey’s new constitution any way it wanted. It is, however, close to the 330 needed to take a constitution that it produced to a referendum. But so what? Deals with a few willing parliamentarians from other parties could provide the five additional votes needed for subitting an AKP-authored constitution to a referendum. The government can offer individuals a lot in order to get their support. And given the way the parliamentary elections went, the AKP can almost certainly win that referendum. "