Last Sunday’s polls in Turkey gave incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan a widely expected victory. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) obtained 50 percent of the vote, winning Erdogan an unprecedented third mandate and increasing the party’s share of votes by more than 3 percent over its already triumphal victory in 2007. A closer look shows that all the major parties actually managed to increase the number of votes they received. That suggests that many Turkish electors ultimately opted for a “strategic vote,” abandoning smaller political groups and their hopeless struggle to overcome the 10-percent threshold to be seated […]
Despite AKP Victory, Turkey’s Elections Reveal Polarization
