The will of the nation

We can read out Election 2009 from different perspectives. It looks like every party has good reasons to be happy about it. Mr. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is still the biggest party. The CHP has increased its vote and made its presence felt in Istanbul and Ankara where it almost did not exist before. The Nationalist Action Party, or MHP, has also increased its vote slightly. The pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP, has enhanced its grip on the southeast vote and added a few more cities to its portfolio of municipalities. The Saadet (Felicity) Party has given signals that it might come back to the political scene under new leadership.

Alternatively, all major players can find reasons to be sorry too. The AKP’s political capital is visibly on decline. The CHP and MHP’s gains are only minimal, and the DTP still fails to appeal to a reasonable majority of voters, therefore containing itself to the unfortunate position of a political party that does politics along ethnic lines. We can always read out the election results in a light, fluffy and goofy way too. As an American friend commented on the AKP’s bitter victory on Sunday, "Perhaps they should have arrested more men for conspiring for the Ergenekon gang!"

Otherwise, we can reach the following conclusions:

1. It would be too premature to claim that Election 2009 could be the beginning of the end for the AKP, but the ruling party is no doubt bleeding. The AKP has failed to win any of the cities it strategically targeted to win, and instead lost some critical ones to the opposition.

2. The AKP’s "Kurdish overtures" apparently failed to earn it votes in the southeast. The southeast voting proves that the Kurds are not seeking broader cultural rights but more than that. Mr. Erdoğan was right to bitterly admit that politics along ethnic lines in the southeast is now an established reality. The DTP controls more cities but its vote is a stable five percent nationwide. It is interesting that the myth about Istanbul as the "world’s biggest Kurdish city" is in shambles as evinced by DTP’s very marginal popularity of less than 4 percent in Turkey’s biggest city. The votes for the "Kurdish cause" in Istanbul appeared to be even less than the same votes nationwide.

3. Mr. Erdoğan, as usual, was resorting to cheap politics when before the elections he denied the global financial crisis and the magnitude of its effects on Turkey, and on the election night he partially blamed the results on the crisis he denied.

4. The Turks have forced the AKP into political consensus. It would now be a near impossibility for Mr. Erdoğan to go solo in his plans to amend the Constitution and give it a more Islamic flavor. He must now seek consensus from the opposition.

5. The numbersÉ

a) The secular block (CHP + Democratic Left Party, or DSP) rose from 21 percent in 2007 to 26 percent in 2009. The difference between the AKP and the secular block fell to 13 percentage points, the lowest since 2002. That discrepancy was 26 percent in 2007. In other words, it was halved in less than two years.

b) The CHP and MHP’s combined vote has for the first time surpassed the AKP’s.

c) The AKP won 8 percentage points higher in municipal polls in 2004 than its national vote in the general elections in 2002. If the same trend continued it would have won 55 percent in 2009, or 16 percentage points higher than what it actually won on March 29.

d) The opposition parties currently represented in Parliament now total 47 percent of the national vote against AKP’s 39 percent Ğ compared to 40 percent versus 47 percent in 2007, representing a 15-point shift against the AKP.

e) Put it differently, the CHP, MHP, DTP and Saadet Party increased their votes by 4.7 million while the AKP lost over 1 million votes, a nearly 6 million swing against the government.

6. The difference between the AKP and the CHP has been significantly narrowed in Istanbul and Ankara and widened in Izmir, all in favor of the CHP.

7. The AKP’s vote would have been lower if there was not foul play and Mr. Erdoğan’s powerful Davos doping. The systematic distribution of goodies and open threats by AKP bigwigs that the cities voting for opposition candidates would be deprived of services and funding should have boosted the AKP’s votes by an incalculable percentage. The voting result in the curious case of one province was particularly amusing: The people of Tunceli, where the AKP’s vote-hunting by handing out household goods, accepted these pre-election gifts but voted for the DTP.

8. It proved to be another myth that the AKP could even have got a "jacket" elected if it nominated it. The people of Şanlıurfa did not vote for the "jacket."

9. In his speech on early results of election results Mr. Erdoğan complained that his party had to fight media groups. Well, apparently the prime minister never learnsÉ His aggressive strategy against his opponents, including critical newspapers, does him no good. So, we have learned from the prime minister that the media is responsible not only for the global financial crisis and corruption in Turkey, but also for the AKP’s poor election performance.

10. Every new election night proves that the Turks are an increasingly right-wing bunch. It is particularly funny to see we have extremely "enlightened" cities in Turkey like Yozgat and Erzurum where the combined Islamist/nationalist vote ranges in the 90 to 95 percent band.

11. It is probably about time that Turkey’s western friends should start to devise contingency plans regarding alternative governments, including coalition options. Such possibilities are not as remote today as they used to be in 2007.