From Conn Hallinan at antiwar.com:
To reverse his fortune at the polls, Erdogan reignited Turkey’s war with the Kurds, stood silent while mobs attacked his opponents, and unilaterally altered the constitutional role of his office
If there’s a lesson to be drawn from the November 1 Turkish elections, it’s that fear works, and there are few people better at engendering it than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Only five months after his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its majority in the Turkish parliament, a snap election put it back in the driver’s seat.
The cost of the victory, however, may be dear.
To achieve it, Erdogan reignited Turkey’s long and bloody war with the Kurds, stood silent while nationalist mobs attacked his opponents, and unilaterally altered the constitutional role of his office.
Observers from the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that violence and attacks on the media had a significant impact on the election. “Unfortunately we come to the conclusion that this campaign was unfair, and was characterized by too much violence and fear,” said Andreas Gross, a Swiss parliamentarian and head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegation.
At the same time the European Union itself seemed to favor an AKP victory. The EU Commission held off a report critical of Turkish democracy until after the vote. And two weeks before the election, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Turkey bearing $3.3 billion in aid for Syrian refugees and an offer for Turkey to revive its efforts to get into the EU. Previously, Merkel had been opposed to Turkish membership in the EU.
The finally tally is almost everything Erdogan wanted, although he fell short of his dream of a supermajority that would let him change the nature of the Turkish political system from a parliamentary government to one ruled by a powerful and centralized executive – himself.
To continue reading: Turkish President Gets His Majority—at a Terrible Price
