Here’s a contrary opinion: Contrary To Media Projections Erdogan’s AKP Will Dominate The Government Of Turkey And Use It To Help Usher In The Antichrist Government By Walid Shoebat.
By Prof. Dan Shapira, ISRAEL HAYOM
The general elections held in Turkey on Sunday were one of the most important elections the country has ever known, and over 86% of the public exercised their right to vote.
This was a remarkable turnout for elections that decided the makeup of Turkey’s 550-seat parliament, where 276 seats represent the majority. Turkey’s ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), garnered some 40% of the votes and secured 253 seats — a drop from the 327 seats it held following the previous elections, and not enough to secure a majority.
AKP won in Istanbul and in most urban provinces, as well as in Ankara. But this was a pyrrhic victory for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutotlu, who had hoped to secure a landslide victory and turn Turkey into a less democratic, more centralized nation.
AKP won nearly half of its votes from Turks voting in Germany, France, Denmark and Norway, and replicated the achievement among Turks voting across the Middle East, including in Iran and Saudi Arabia. This trend pointed to the political sentiments of Turkish immigrants in these countries, and affects these nations’ domestic politics, especially in Germany.
The Republican People’s Party (CHP), the current incarnation of the Kemalist social-democratic party, won 132 parliament seats — a respectable achievement compared to the blow it suffered in the 1999 elections, when it won less than 10% of votes.
CHP has been slowly regaining its political footing, and its supporters come mostly from the affluent neighborhoods in the larger urban areas in Turkey’s European region and the Aegean shore, meaning the country’s most developed areas. Its constituency comprises secular and traditional-liberal Turks, as well as the Alawite minority in Turkey, which supports the country’s political Left and opposes Sunni Islam.
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) struggled to pass Turkey’s 10% electoral threshold, eventually winning 13% of the votes. As of Tuesday morning, and with the ballots still being counted, HDP is projected to win between 79 and 82 parliament seats.
HDP is often depicted as a Kurdish party, as most of its constituency comprises Kurds, but it has emerged as the new populist leftist party, and it opposes both Islamism and classic Kemalist nationalism. Interestingly, some 20% of HDP’s votes came from Turks living outside Turkey.
The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) secured 16% of the votes and 82 seats in Ankara’s parliament, improving its performance from the previous Turkish elections. MHP’s history, however, is rooted firmly in fascism, and the party has gone to great lengths to distance itself from its past.
Since first being elected prime minister in 2003, Erdo?an has been striving to eradicate the old Kemalist elite’s political influence, expand Islam’s hold on public life, and turn the Turkish economy into a free and competitive market, and he has succeeded on all counts.
Erdo?an’s foreign minister, Davuto?lu, who has since succeeded him as prime minister, introduced neo-Ottomanism — a political ideology that promotes greater Turkish political engagement in the region — and a policy of “zero problems with all neighbors.” Ironically, this has seen Turkey make enemies of all of its neighbors.
Erdo?an’s anti-Kemalist and pro-Islamist policies are motivated mainly by the substantial demographic shifts in Turkey: Over the next generation, Turkey may become a binational state of Turks and Kurds, and traditional Islam and anti-Kemalist sentiments will serve as the glue keeping the fabric of this future society together.
The Turkish president also understands that to keep the economy stable and thriving, traditional Kurdish women must be integrated into the workforce, which mandates the state provide them with a more traditional work environment.
HDP’s impressive election achievement, however, indicated that, as over half of the Kurdish population voted for a radical leftist, feminist party, they have no interest in a more Islamist Turkey.
The election’s results further indicate that some in the Turkish pubic have grown tired of Erdo?an and AKP. Turkey currently faces two options: forming a government that includes post-fascist elements, or calling new elections in six weeks, the results of which would be anybody’s guess.
Professor Dan Shapira is a faculty member in the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University.
This only confirm that a majority of Muslim immigrants have NO INTENTION whatsoever to assimilate in the countries where they immigrate.