Turkish newspapers said yesterday that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decisive election win was a public backlash against the military, which had threatened his government and sparked snap polls.
"The nation has the last word," the moderate Islamist Zaman said, referring to an army communique in April warning Erdogan's government that it would step in if necessary to protect Turkey's secular credentials -- a step which finally led to Sunday's elections.
Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a second term in power after sweeping 46.3 percent of the vote.
PHOTO: AP
The vote was brought forward from November after an opposition boycott in parliament prevented the AKP from electing one of its own people as president in April.
"If it had not been for the [military] memorandum, if there had been no outside intervention in politics ... the AKP share of the vote would not have gone to nearly 47 percent," wrote Ismet Berkan, editor-in-chief of the liberal daily Radikal.
The mass-circulation Hurriyet said: "The people do not like governments that quarrel with the soldiers, but the people also do not like military intervention."
The Aksam daily described Erdogan's victory as "The Third People's Revolution", saying he had become the third highest vote earner in Turkey since multi-party democracy was introduced in 1946.
The AKP also became the first Turkish party in 50 years to increase its votes in a re-election, despite opposition efforts to portray the Islamist-rooted party as a Trojan horse set to turn Turkey into an Iranian-style theocracy.
Erdogan on Sunday vowed to press on with reforms to turn Turkey into a modern democracy on a par with its European neighbors.
It was a personal triumph for Erdogan, a controversial but extremely popular politician.
Two other, secularist, parties made it into parliament -- the nationalist Republican People's Party (CHP) with around 111 seats and the far-right National Movement Party (MHP) with 71.
The next government will quickly face new challenges ranging from economic reform to a possible military incursion to root out Turkish Kurd rebels based in north Iraq.
Erdogan must tread gingerly between supporters who hope his victory might mean an easing of religious restrictions in public life -- such as a ban on headscarves in public offices -- and army generals who see defending a secular system as their duty.
The AK Party must find a compromise candidate for president, and quickly have to decide whether to send the army into northern Iraq to crush Turkish Kurdish rebels based there.
Turkish security forces have been battling PKK rebels since 1984 in a conflict that has cost more than 30,000 lives. Violent clashes have increased over the past year.
Some 27 mainly Kurdish independents got into parliament, the first Kurds since the early 1990s.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS