Oct 31, Galatasaray, Saturday Mothers gather in call for justice for the Kurdish disappeared in Turkey's attempt to root out the PKK in the 90's. Demotix/ Sahan Nuholglu. All rights reserved.November 1 snap elections in Turkey, to everybody’s surprise, produced a very different political landscape from that emerging in the June 7 elections. The leading AK Party, which lost its parliamentary majority in June 7 elections, received 49% of the votes and 317 seats in the Parliament. The party had managed to persuade a cross section of voters ranging from a nationalist core to the conservative Kurds that it was the only party able to provide stability and security.
The biggest agent of change in the June elections, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), this time barely managed to cross the 10% threshhold, its votes dropping from 13% to 10.8%. According to preliminary estimates, around half of the more conservative, middle class Kurdish voters, who turned their backs on the AK Party in June and voted for HDP, now switched back to the AKP.
AKP’s return to single party rule has immediately raised the question of the future of the halted peace process. Many assume that the results provide the next AK Party government with a golden chance to restart the process; however, with so many dynamics at play, the potential resurfacing of a proposed change to a presidential system, and related political bargains, it is very hard to foresee under what conditions the peace process could restart and evolve.
