Rosettes at HDP's massive election rally in Istanbul. Demotix/ Sahan Nuhoglu. All rights reserved.In Turkey, most elections are more than mere elections. The latest June 7 parliamentary elections were like this again. It turned out to be a referendum on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s desire to switch the country’s parliamentary system into a presidential one.
The election results struck a major blow to the governing AK Party and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions. The AK Party received 41% of the votes and 258 seats in the Parliament: a steep drop from the 2011 elections where the party won 327 seats in the parliament. The main actor responsible for this drop is the People’s Democracy Party - HDP. The HDP received 13% of the votes, coming out of the elections as the third biggest party (together with Nationalist Action Party-MHP) and represented in the parliament with 80 seats. Long regarded as the biggest threat to Turkey’s political system and territorial integrity, the Kurds have emerged as not only the champion of Turkish democracy but also the protector of the country’s parliamentary regime.
It is commonly assumed that elections provide Turkey’s polarized political environment with some relief. The four political parties that made it to the parliament mirror well the diversity of Turkish society, improving the Parliament’s demographic representation. But the result has hardly settled the dust over Turkish politics in the short term. Turkey is susceptible to more instability and uncertainties in the coming years. Each coalition scenario has its own challenges: none seem sustainable in the face of the country’s imminent economic problems. However, predictions over coalition prospects in the short run are beyond the scope of this article. Rather, I want to look at the question of the behavior of the Kurdish votes, their evolution in recent years, and implications for Turkish politics.
