Elections in Turkey: Erdoğan’s Juggernaut Continues
Michael A. Reynolds
July 5, 2018
On June 24, citizens of Turkey voted in what was one of the most important elections in the nearly 95-year history of their republic. The election was unusually important for a number of reasons. It was important in part because voters cast ballots not in one contest but two: a presidential and a parliamentary contest. The fact that it was the first election under a substantially amended constitution that redefines the roles of president and parliament and assigns vastly expanded powers to the presidency was another. A third reason is that the election was in effect a referendum on Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has dominated Turkish politics for the past 16 years and who has had an impact on the republic second only to that of its founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The election unequivocally ended in a major victory for Erdoğan, and it positions him to pursue and perhaps fulfill his ambition to surpass in impact Atatürk, whom he regards not only as his competitor in the realm of historical influence but as an ideological opponent. Erdoğan’s ultimate ambition is to transform Turkey from the republic that Atatürk founded into the one that Erdoğan remade. Fulfilling this vision by the centenary in 2023 provides Erdoğan a tangible goal.
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