2011 Turkey Deputy Election Results & Interpretation

The elections in Turkey took place on 12th June 2011 and AK PARTİ (currently ruling) was the winner of the elections with a vote rate of about 49,9%.

This way they will be able to get about 326 deputies into the parliament to give them  the power to undertake many intitatives not to include re-writing of a new institution.

CHP managed to get a vote of approx. 26% (a disappointment for KILIÇDAROĞLU) in which case they will be  able to get 135 deputies in the assembly.

MHP on the other hand surprisingly surpassed the threshold of 13,4% securing about 54 deputies in the parliament.

36 independent candidates (belonging to pro-Kurdish BDP mainly) were able to get seats in the parliament as well.

The message of the citizens was “we do not wish to have a change in the economical policies of the country. We are pleased with the current status. We want to (at least) keep it as it is – even if not better”.

This was a very clear message as grasped by the vote holders that AK Parti is considered to be successful in the management of economy on the contrary to many economists who maintain that the picture of the Turkish economy – including current account deficit – has not been going for the better.

Apparently, Erdoğan’s personal leadership skills have also played a major role in this bright achievement.In fact, ERDOĞAN has a  very apparent advantage over CHP (and leader). That is he (and AKP) can communicate to people much more efficiently. Also, his strategists have obviously been doing a better job as would be understood from his final moves just before elections.

Erdoğan who started the Kurdish opening campaign a short while ago, risking many nationalist votes made an unbelievable turn right at the last moment a few weeks before end of election campaign and became a nationalist leader all of a sudden at a price of confronting the pro-Kurdish BDP and many Kurdish votes in the south eastern region.

This last minute move won him a great deal of votes, obviously.

On top of the enjoyable feeling of victory over his rivals ERDOĞAN must be very glad to see that his prospective bid for the presidential system is not only a dream and could be realized providing he displays a similar performance when this issue is in the agenda in the close future.

Looking at the issue from CHP point of view, a solid fact seems to be that the PROJECTS prepared and announced by the CHP leader has not helped much to attract more votes from the medium/poor income voting group targeted by CHP.

Then again, CHP – known as very secular and nationalist – has played with its image by displaying a much more flexible attitude towards the Kurdish movement (considered to be separatist by many people) which obviously caused CHP to lose many patriotistic votes.

All above points must be considered a good teaching for the CHP leader at the beginning of his leadership career which we hope he will take for a useful lesson for the next rally with AKP, four years ahead – if he manages to keep his position.

And finally small parties such as DSP (ECEVIT, former leader), SAADET PARTY (Erbakan, former leader) etc have been wiped out of the arena.

Turkey is to face some real tough issues such as the pro-Kurdish population demanding regional self-determination and others like shortcoming of production and provision of huge funds to realize many giant projects promised during the campaign.

Last but not least, preparing a new constitution would be another major issue to cope with for the new AKP government.

Editor
BUSINESS TURKEY TODAY