President Tayyip Erdogan’s longtime grip on power was put to a critical test on Sunday in elections likely to determine the trajectory of a polarised country hit by mounting internal bloodshed and economic worries.
The poll was the second in five months, after the AK Party founded by Erdogan lost in June the single-party governing majority it had enjoyed since first taking power in 2002.
Since June, a ceasefire with Kurdish militants has collapsed, the war in neighbouring Syria has worsened and Turkey - a Nato member state - has been buffeted by two Islamic State-linked suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 130 people.
Investors and Western allies hope the vote will help restore stability as well as confidence in the more than $800bn Turkish economy, allowing Ankara to play a more effective role in stemming a flood of refugees from neighbouring wars via Turkey into Europe and helping in the battle against Islamic State militants.
This time, there were few of the flags, posters and campaign buses that thronged the streets in the build-up to June’s vote. But Erdogan framed this sombre re-run as a pivotal opportunity for Turkey to return to single-party AKP rule after months of political uncertainty.
Voters were sharply divided in their views on a return to single-party rule or the prospect of a coalition.
Some Western allies, foreign investors and Turks see an AKP coalition with the CHP as the best hope of easing sharp divisions in the EU-candidate nation, and say it could keep Erdogan’s authoritarian instincts in check.
Erdogan’s gamble
The election was prompted by the AKP’s inability to find a junior coalition partner after the June outcome. Erdogan’s critics said it represented a gamble by the combative leader to win back enough support so the party can eventually change the constitution and give him greater presidential powers.
Many polls indicated that while support for the centre-right, Islamist-rooted AKP may have inched up, the result was unlikely to be dramatically different to June, when it took 40.9% of the vote.
However, a survey released on Thursday suggested there had been a late surge in backing for the AKP and that it could take as much as 47.2%, comfortably enough to secure more than half of the 550-seat parliament.
Whatever the outcome, deep splits in Turkey - between pious conservatives who champion Erdogan as a hero of the working class, and Western-facing secularists suspicious of his authoritarianism and Islamist ideals - is likely to remain.
If the AKP fails again to secure an absolute majority, it may be forced back to the negotiating table with either the main secularist CHP opposition or the nationalist MHP.
AKP officials were hoping the turbulence of recent months will steer voters who remember the fragile coalition governments of the 1990s back to the AKP, and were betting that a recent crackdown on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will claw back nationalist votes.
