ISTANBUL: According to unofficial results, Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) emerged victorious on Sunday in Turkey polls.
Turkish Prime Minister AhmetDavutoglu hailed a “day of victory” after his ruling party regained its parliamentary majority in Sunday’s vote.
“Today is a day of victory,” a smiling Davutoglu told a crowd of supporters in central Anatolian city of Konya, his hometown. “The victory belongs to the people.”
The party leads Sunday’s general elections with 49.4 percent of the votes, while 95.5 percent of the votes have been counted, results reported by the semi-official Anadolu Agency showed.
The AK Party is followed by the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 25.3 of the votes, far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) with 12 percent and the pro-Kurdish left-wing Peoples’ Demcoratic Party (HDP) with 10.4 percent.
With these results, AK Party is predicted to claim 316 seats in the 550-seat parliament, chased by CHP with 133 seats, HDP with 59 seats and MHP with 42 seats. Parties need to secure 276 seats to govern the country alone.
Turkey voted in parliamentary elections for a second time in five months amid instability spilling over from neighbouring Syria and renewed tensions over the 30-year-old Kurdish conflict.
More than 54 million people were registered to vote at 175,000 stations on Sunday. All polling stations closed by 5pm, local time.
The June 7 elections had seen the Justice and Development Party (AK party) loosen its grip on 13-year single party rule, but four political parties that made their way to the parliament failed to produce a coalition government, and snap elections were called.
In the June polls, the AK party secured 258 seats in the 550-seat house, losing many to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which achieved unprecedented success for a pro-Kurdish party by getting 80 seats.
Unofficial election results are expected on Sunday evening. The election council will announce official results in several days.
The main opposition, centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) and far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), which respectively won 131 and 80 seats in the last elections, are the other main players in the polls – among the 16 political parties in the fray.
Parties need to secure 276 seats to govern the country alone. Latest surveys predict a similar four-party setting in the parliament after Sunday’s polls. However, opinion polls have diverse results on the AK Party’s capability to secure a single-party government once again.
In his election campaign, AK Party leader and prime minister, AhmetDavutoglu, promised to re-establish stability.
Supporters of the AK Party said it changed the decades-long secularist military and bureaucracy-powered politics of Turkey, freeing the religiously conservative parts of the society and converted an ailing economy plagued by chronic inflation into a growing and stable one.
Whereas, the party has faced propaganda by Western governments, rights groups and the Turkish opposition parties for cracking down on opposition protests and press freedom, alleged corruption, social media bans, and judicial amendments allegedly meant to accumulate power.
