Kadri Gürsel on the Diken news site notes that AKP’s vice chairman Mehmet Ali Şahin on October 26 stated that “If the election yields a result similar to that which the June 7 election produced, then I’m afraid that there is going to be talk about a renewed election.” The Erdoğan regime refuses to obey popular will and share power and it is scheming to repeat the election until it gets the result that ensures that it can stay in power forever. The things that the Erdoğan regime has done since June 7 tell us what it is going to do if it decides to hold a third election after November 1. It has threatened society with terror and instability by restarting the fight with PKK – which was nothing but a product of electoral engineering – and by the inclusion of ISIS as the other actor in the equation. What is frightening is an election result along what the surveys suggest, that the AKP gets around 41 to 42, maybe over 42 percent of the votes… In that case, the regime may conclude that the policies it has pursued since June 7 have paid off and decide to pursue these with even more determination. If it chooses that path, it can be expected to silence what is left of independent media and take the country to another ballot under conditions found only in dictatorships.
Oral Çalışlar in Radikal writes that it is highly likely that various coalition formulas are going to be discussed after November 1, just as was the case after June 7, and that the AKP is once again going to be at the center of these. [HDP co-chair] Demirtaş has made the assessment that "the AKP needs to change itself." It is a fact that this assessment points toward an interesting potential. Whatever happens, Turkey is ultimately going to return to the solution process [of the Kurdish issue]. The discussions about disarmament and about democratization projects are going to resume… For that to happen, and for the discussions to continue once they have started, AKP and HDP, as in the past, are going to have to put in work hours together. If the AKP does not get a majority, there is inevitably a coalition on the horizon. It is useful to be open to new experiences, to new searches and to be courageous.
Abdülkadir Selvi in Yeni Şafak writes that support for the AKP seems to be around 44 percent at the start of the election campaign. That means an increase of three percentage points compared to the result on June 7. There are three main reasons for the AKP’s increase. First, the governmental vacuum that has reigned since June 7 has made those who care about stability to turn to the AKP. Second, one to two percentage points are made up of returning voters from the MHP, in reaction to the intransigency of MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli after the election, when he refused to consider a coalition [with the AKP] and stayed out of the [caretaker] government when the fight against PKK had started. The third factor is those who voted for the [Islamist] Felicity Party and The Party of Grand Unity (BBP) on June 7, and who are now concluding that “Our votes did not have any effect on the political equation. Let’s now make sure that we get a majority government.”
By Nick Danforth
September 23rd, 2015, The Turkey Analyst
Turkey’s democratic and authoritarian legacies have been thoroughly intertwined from the outset. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian instincts have been both motivated and enabled by the authoritarian behavior of his predecessors. Yet Erdoğan is also restrained by institutional forces that remain in place because military and civilian leaders before him proved willing to step down and compromise. And he is moreover restrained by the instincts of voters and some within his own party who value Turkey’s democratic tradition.
Mümtazer Türköne in Zaman writes that both PKK and Erdoğan seem determined to finish off the HDP. After November 1, the HDP is not going to be in parliament. Erdoğan is going to repair the damages and will continue to build his autocracy; the PKK meanwhile, will have gotten the conditions it wanted so that it can escalate its “revolutionary people’s war” against a state that has lost its legitimacy and that is increasingly resorting to violence. The violence of the PKK is going to continue and intensify up until the November 1 election. The HDP is going to protest against the curfews and the practice of security zones as being expressions of “the oppression of the voters” and is going to boycott the election. The result: the AKP is going to get the majority with at least 300 deputies in parliament. The palace will get its undivided power back. And then, a bloodbath that will make us long for the present days will ensue. To use Demirtaş' expression, the violence is going to spread all the way to Bodrum (on the west coast.) The palace will maintain control for yet another period. But in the end, both – palace and PKK – are going to be the losers.
The Turkey Analyst is a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center, designed to bring authoritative analysis and news on the rapidly developing domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey. It includes topical analysis, as well as a summary of the Turkish media debate.
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