"The AKP's Underwhelming Victory: How the Election Will Change Turkish Politics
By Soner Cagaptay
ForeignAffairs.com, June 26, 2011
In this month's Turkish parliamentary elections, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) won almost 50 percent of the popular vote, up from 46.5 in the previous elections. The success was thanks in part to Turkey's strong performance under the conservative AKP; since 2002, Turkey's economic growth has been behind only that of China and India. Still, the AKP fell short by three seats of retaining the supermajority -- control of 330 out of 550 parliamentary seats, which gives a single party the ability to amend the constitution -- that the party has enjoyed since 2002, when it first came to power. (Although the AKP increased its vote share this year, the secular, social democratic Republican Peoples Party [CHP] and Kurdish nationalist Peace and Democracy Party [BDP] registered higher gains, therefore stealing some AKP seats.) This is a positive development for Turkey's fragile democracy, which has become dangerously polarized between the conservatives and the secular liberals. For the first time in nearly a decade, the AKP will be forced to seek consensus to govern, especially in regions where its electoral performance was weak: the country's liberal Aegean coast, Thrace, and the middle-class neighborhoods of Istanbul and other large cities. "
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