Turkey: Hope and Fear
Posted: 06/23/2015 9:04 am EDT Updated: 06/23/2015 9:59 am EDT
(Co-authored by Veli Sirin, European director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism.)
Two weeks have passed since the legislative elections of June 7 marked a major shift in the recent history of Turkey. The Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish), headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, lost its parliamentary majority, declining to 258 out of 550 seats. Opposition parties of the left and right profited from AKP's setback. The secularist Republican People's Party (CHP), in the first category, rose to 132 members. The ultra-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), with an ugly history of political and ethnic violence under the name of the "Grey Wolves," nonetheless elected 80 deputies, an increase of 29. But the wonder of the polls was the emergence of the People's Democratic Party (HDP), a coalition of Kurds, secularists, leftists, heterodox Alevi Muslims, and former supporters of the AKP, with 80 lawmakers.
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