The June 7 general election marked the start of a new era for Turkey, with the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) single-party government -- in place since 2002 -- coming to an end. And though the AKP picked up more votes than its rivals, it, and more importantly President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, emerged as the true defeated forces in this election. As this happened, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the Republican People's Party (CHP) emerged as victors in many ways.
Entering into nearly all its previous election races waving the mantle of “the oppressed,” despite its position in power, this time around the AKP hit the campaign trail as the all-powerful ruling party. And, as such, it was not in the position to lay the blame for all the failure, corruption charges and various injustices at the feet of anyone else. And, what's more, Erdoğan's blatant trampling of the principle of objectivity that comes with the Office of the President did much to harm the AKP's sense of gravitas, not to mention its image as a party, during the campaign period.
In fact, the dimension to which Erdoğan participated in the election campaigning -- in a way anathema not only to basic democratic customs in this country but to principles of objectivity underscored in our Constitution -- wound up turning the parliamentary election into a referendum on him. And, to wit, the AKP emerged from June 7 voting with a percentage not far from the already low 38 percent satisfaction level expressed by the people for the president lately. There is simply no question that the 41 percent vote netted by the AKP in this critical round of voting is a strong symbol of failure. And, in the coming days, we'll see who is held responsible for this failure.
In the meantime, the clear victors of June 7 are the HDP, which swept in hope for democracy by surpassing all the barriers before it, and the CHP and its leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who has said of the HDP's victory, “It is democracy that is the winner, and the loser is President Tayyip Erdogan.”
Placing the theme of “Stopping the AKP, and not allowing Erdoğan to become president [in a presidential system]” at the center of its platform, the HDP reached out to all factions opposing the AKP leadership in Turkey. The fact that the HDP made it over the vote threshold with 13 percent clearly shows that this strategy worked. What's more, HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, by virtue of his performance and his widespread social acceptance, has shown himself to be a candidate for the center political stage in Turkey, despite having risen up through the ranks of the Kurdish political movement.
In the meantime, it also appears the CHP made the right choice in abandoning its usual themes of identity, lifestyle, secularity and Kemalism, and focusing instead on economic and freedom-related problems facing Turkish society. In fact, intra-party satisfaction ratings for CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu appeared to rise some 7-10 points during the recent campaigning period.
Of course, despite all this, the CHP still only netted around 25 percent of the vote, and this was because it was the party whose voters wound up pushing the HDP over the threshold.
As for the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), its votes increased in comparison to results from the 2011 election. One cannot, however, say that this was a result of its campaigning. The main factor in any increase for MHP votes was rooted in increasing fears among nationalist voters about the unity of the country under AKP rule. And, in fact, the MHP was hovering around 17-18 percent at the end of March, which actually means that its election campaign period was truly not that strong.
Another phenomenon that distinguished these elections was the success of research polling companies, despite recent and notable failures by Israeli and British polling firms. Of course, the same cannot be said of the polling companies working for the ruling AKP.
MetroPOLL determined that, from September 2014 until around now, the AKP experienced a constant downward trend, dropping under 50 percent and arriving at around 41.7 percent in April of this year, and then down more towards 41 percent by the end of May. Similarly, this company foresaw -- and shared with the public -- that the HDP, if it were to enter these elections as a party (rather than with individual independent candidates), would in fact surpass the 10 percent threshold. And so, the HDP's decision to do so was a timely and correct one. In fact, the latest estimates from MetroPOLL vis-à-vis the HDP's net vote put the party at around 11.5 percent. It was, in the end, the president's aggressive conduct and his open trampling of constitutional principles of objectivity, combined with Demirtaş's staggeringly strong performance and perhaps most importantly the CHP's own voters' abandonment of their usual party in favor of boosting the HDP that wound up bringing the HDP to 13 percent of the vote.
In short, it was immense prudence and wisdom shown by Turkish voters that wound up breaking down that dirty remnant of the Sept. 12, 1980 coup, the 10 percent vote threshold. This was a move that our political parties were never able -- or never wanted -- to remove, and it was pushed aside by the people of the country. And now, nothing will ever be as it was before. I hope that our politicians read the messages from the people correctly, and take time to review their methods and behavior accordingly. With hopes that the results augur well for us all.
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