Short of an outright victory for Turkey’s authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it was the worst result the country’s opposition could have imagined
, the candidate of the Nation Alliance, a coalition of six opposition parties, had secured only 45% in the presidential election, according to Turkey’s election board.
is projected to translate into about 213 out of the 600 seats. Mr Erdogan’s bloc, known as the People’s Alliance, led by his own Justice and Development party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party , walked away with 49.4%, enough to retain a comfortable majority in the assembly. A smaller opposition alliance headed by Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party , received 10.5% .
The key to Mr Erdogan’s success in the first round was that he convinced enough voters that the election was less about the economy, plagued by 43% inflation, than about identity, national pride, and security, says Ahmet Han, an international relations professor at Beykoz University. He did so by showing off a bewildering array of new projects, including Turkey’s biggest warship, its first electric car, and a Russian-built nuclear plant, and by scaremongering.
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