Erdogan’s AKP set to win as polarised Turkey goes to polls
ISTANBUL: Turkey’s long-dominant Justice and Development Party (AKP) was poised to win back a clear parliamentary majority on Sunday, according to latest results from one of the country’s most critical elections in years.
The party founded by strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had around 51 percent of the vote with more than 80 percent of ballots counted, CNNTurk television reported.
That would give it 325 seats in the 550-seat parliament, well ahead of its three main rival parties and easily enough to form a government on its own.
Erdogan’s longtime grip on power was put to a critical test on Sunday in elections likely to determine the trajectory of a polarised country hit by mounting internal bloodshed and economic worries.
The poll the second in five months, after the AK Party founded by Erdogan lost in June the single-party governing majority it had enjoyed since first taking power in 2002.
Since June, a ceasefire with Kurdish militants has collapsed, the war in neighbouring Syria has worsened and Turkey - a NATO member state - has been buffeted by two Islamic Statelinked suicide bomb attacks that killed more than 130 people.
Investors and Western allies hope the vote will help restore stability as well as confidence in the more than $800 billion Turkish economy, allowing Ankara to play a more effective role in stemming a flood of refugees from neighbouring wars via Turkey into Europe and helping in the battle against Islamic State militants.
Some Western allies, foreign investors and Turks see an AKP coalition with the CHP as the best hope of easing sharp divisions in the EU-candidate nation, and say it could keep Erdogan’s authoritarian instincts in check.
The election was prompted by the AKP’s inability to find a junior coalition partner after the June outcome. Erdogan’s critics said it represented a gamble by the combative leader to win back enough support so the party can eventually change the constitution and give him greater presidential powers.