2011 Turkish General Elections
In about four months time general elections will be held in Turkey; 12th of June to be precise. It's anticipated to be one of the most important elections since AKP came to power. Even though some might think why should they care but I'm sure some people will take interest in the elections as it will determine future of domestic and international affairs of Turkey deeply and probably some new threads will appear. So, I'll give some information on political parties and past elections in this opening post and anything may be put here in the future.
Let's just keep the nasty remarks and subtle insults out of this and have a decent and simple discussion on politics. Feel free to ask any question on Turkey and I'll respond as informative and opinion-free as possible.
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One thing to know before everything else about Turkish elections is the fact that there is an election threshold of 10%. It's usually contrasted to thresholds in various EU states which have it around 1-5% and deemed to be outdated.
The parliament is made up of 550 members and the numbers in parenthesis is the respective number of members in the parliament from each party. The parties below represent the situation as of 2011.
List of parties and abbreviations:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
AKP:
They came to power after a series of economic crisis in Turkey. People were fed up with failed economic policies of the past(mostly because they were long term solutions with no substantial impact in the short run). So the economic rise of Turkey of tday is mostly due to foreign investment and what we call "hot money." Before them the South Eastern Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP) was started which targeted the South Eastern Turkey where bunch of dams and institutions would be built which would provide employment and agricultural boost. They're accused of being religious but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest threat is that one by one they're replacing people in important institutions in Turkey; Police force, Judicial system, etc. Some people who used to vote for them started to fear that Erdoğan, the leader of AKP, of becoming a tyrant.
CHP:
They've been around for quite sometime though they were shot down by the military between 1980 and 1992. Under the former leader, Deniz Baykal, they entered a pitch battle with AKP as the main opposition party. Under Baykan, even though they increased their votes up above 20% they were less than efficient. With the change of Baykal to Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu they became much more active and efficient. Their policies can be described as Social Democracy that play well with Capitalism. They haven't been in power of any institution of government so I can't really give examples of their policies but lately AKP have been mimicking their declared policies as their own. They're the party that are labeled after the Kemalist ideology though I'm pretty sure if you asked any of those people they wouldn't be able to tell you what it is. They're not really pro-army but they're not really anti-army as well.
MHP:
They're what some people would ultra-nationalist. They're quite religious too. They're much harsher on certain issues and most likely hold Turkish identity above all. Nonetheless, they don't have much support and a great portion of its supporters are not that zealous. The good thing about them is that they can play along nice.
BDP:
They're the continuation of a series of Kurdish nationalist party. Even though Turkey has roughly 15-20% ethnic Kurds they never get more than 5% of the votes. In the past they even tried to enter the election with a few other parties combined and still pulled 5-6%. They're made up of people that used to enter elections from CHP. So they share some of the ideals but never pursue them much as their Kurdish identity comes first.
To understand the trend we have to start looking at elections from the general election right before AKP was created. General and local elections are held every 5 years. In 1999 general and local elections were held at the same day. Only parties that got more than 5% of the votes are listed below.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
From the past election results we see AKP rising very fast and then starting a decline with 2009 local elections. This trend is also echoed by a number of polls by SONAR research company that is known to produce polls that predicted the past elections accurately.
The polls from May, June and July of 2010:
May
June
July
Another indication was the recent referendum held in Turkey where a constitutional change packet that was proposed by AKP but opposed by opposition parties got "Yes" by 57.88%. The problem with this for AKP is that the vote turnout was 73.71% which makes the real percentage of those that voted "Yes" to be 42.66%. While it's safe to assume that almost all of AKP supporters voted "Yes", not all of the CHP and MHP supporters either voted or some voted "Yes". I myself was denied a vote as I was traveling that day and they didn't allow me to vote in the airport.
So, a great portion of that 42.66% is not made up of people that would vote for AKP. Back then when I made a more detailed calculation taking off percentages based on indications of that time to get to see how much of that whole percentage of people that voted "Yes" made up the AKP supporters and found it to be 29%. Of course, it's been some time since then and things can change but since then the trend is unlikely to change.
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Please feel free to shoot some questions based on what I've written above.
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Originally Posted by CiviC
