Aug. 10, 2014, will probably be recorded in the annals of Turkish history as a turning point. It is the date when Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the longest-serving prime minister of Turkey’s 91-year old republic, became the first president ever elected by popular vote.
Erdogan won with roughly 51.7% of the vote, a narrower margin than many had predicted. KONDA, breaking the rules, had announced 72 hours before the election that Erdogan was expected to win with 57%, a very clear margin. Other contenders were enraged that Turkey’s most prestigious polling company had been used by Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to discourage those voters spending their vacations in the coastal areas of Turkey from coming back to cast their votes.
Such speculation was not totally groundless given the election results. Erdogan won with nearly 52% in the first round against his main contender, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. The joint candidate of two opposition parties, the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP) and the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Ihsanoglu was expected to amass 38.5% of the vote, a fairly safe margin. Nonetheless, if the figures are more closely scrutinized, they indicate that Erdogan won more or less the same votes that his party had won only a few months ago in the March 30 local elections, while the sum total of the votes of the two opposition parties dropped drastically.
On March 30, 89% of the voters cast their ballots while on Aug. 10, that number stood at only around 74%. Out of the nearly 53 million registered voters, 13 million declined to vote. Comparing Erdogan’s 20,520,000 with the ruling AKP’s turnout on March 30, one can conclude that there has been no increase in support for Erdogan, but he and his party have preserved their strength. (Some observers remind us that in the general elections of 2011, the ruling AKP led by Erdogan had won 21.5 million votes. Though such analogies may sound reasonable, should not diminish the value and significance of Erdogan’s victory in the presidential elections, taking into consideration the changed local, regional and international circumstances since then.)
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