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.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS