Turkish voters call for change

“Turkey’s voters have spoken and ended the absolute power of the AK Party which had lasted for 13 years,” said euronews reporter Bora Bayraktar who was in Ankara for the election and gave the following analysis of the results.

new coalition era

It seems the country wants an era of coalitions after the the AKP lost nine percentage points and 68 seats.

The big winner of these elections is the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) with 13% of votes. HDP didn’t get just the votes of the Kurdish people, it also pulled in those from a large part of four opposition groups.

voter message

But what do these results mean? What’s the message that the voters wanted to send?

First and foremost they wanted give Kurdish politique a legitimacy. And they evidently want the Kurdish problem to be resolved in parliament.

Another very important result of these elections is that voters have rejected the imposition of an idea by the president to turn Turkey into a full blown presidential republic. The Turkish people said “no” to such a presidential system by not giving a majority to the AKP which it needed to change the constitution to change the parliamentary system. They haven’t even given the necessary votes need for the AKP to rule alone .Instead voters said “you had better reconcile your differences.”

AK Party’s popularity

But the votes the AKP have won are not insignificant. The AKP is still the largest party in the country. This could be read as voters being content with the current economic development and reforms.

In short, the June 7 elections have seen the Turkish people send out several very clear messages, but the most important is that they have left the politicians with a difficult puzzle to solve. Either they sit down at a table and cooperate, or there will be early elections.