What do Turkish swing voters want?
Most informed observers in Turkey and abroad agree that both the country's current domestic agenda and foreign policy are, to a large extent, driven by the personal preoccupations of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. At home, he is preventing the formation of a coalition government and pushing for early elections, expecting the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to do better than last time. That would again allow the party to form an AKP government able and willing to implement the president's wishes. Across the border, Turkish forces are pounding Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions after a series of reckless terrorist attacks on police and army personnel. Erdoğan seems to hope the new round of fighting will strengthen his position as a strong national leader in times of trouble and will fatally harm the electoral prospects of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). In the event of early elections, if the Kurdish-origin party does not manage to pass the 10 percent electoral threshold because many of its new voters do not appreciate the party's ambiguous position vis-a-vis the PKK attacks, the AKP would almost automatically regain its majority in Parliament.
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