Divide and Conquer: Voting Patterns and Erdogan’s Campaign Strategy Ahead of Turkey’s Snap Election
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
For more than two months after the June 7 election, Turkey remained in a sort of political deadlock. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan might have lost its outright majority in parliament, but it was still the largest party and charged with trying to form a coalition government. Each of the three other parties in parliament, however, campaigned explicitly against the AKP’s central objective: changing the constitution to create a strong presidential, rather than parliamentary, system. Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising that the coalition formation process was unusually drawn out and failed to yield any workable government.
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