Turks voted yesterday for a new parliament that will face a host of challenges: a presidential election, violence by Kurdish rebels and a growing divide over the role of Islam in society.
The election was called early to defuse a political crisis over the Islamic-oriented ruling party's choice of presidential candidate, and the three-month campaign has been peaceful. Turkey has made big strides after the economic and political chaos of past decades, but some fear yesterday's vote could deepen divisions in the mostly Muslim nation of 73 million people.
"It looks like this new government will also find it hard to elect the president. The current situation looks very blurry," said Deniz Mat, a 22-year-old university graduate.
But he added: "Turkey is undergoing a fast pace of change, and I am hopeful for the future no matter which parties form the parliament."
The first of 160,000 polling stations opened at 7am in 32 eastern provinces, and polls in the rest of the country opened an hour later. Campaigning was prohibited on Sunday. Fourteen parties and 700 independent candidates were competing for the support of 42.5 million eligible voters.
Parties must win at least 10 percent of the votes in order to have representation in parliament, a high threshold that has drawn some criticism as being undemocratic.
The country has an emboldened class of devout Muslims, led by a ruling party with a willingness to pursue Western-style reforms in order to strengthen the economy and join the EU.
The success of this group has often been touted as proof that Islam and democracy can coexist, although its detractors accuse Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his allies of plotting to scrap Turkey's secular traditions despite their openness to the West.
Many of these government opponents constitute a traditional elite and have roots in state institutions such as the courts and the military, guardians of the secular legacy of national founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
They argue that personal freedoms -- such as the right to drink alcohol or a woman's choice of clothing -- are in peril, but they have more of an authoritarian background and less of a reformist record than the government.
Voter surveys suggest the ruling Justice and Development Party will retain a majority in the 550-member parliament, although its winning margin is likely to be smaller than when it came to power in 2002 elections.
One of the first jobs of the new parliament will be to elect a president.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS