…and He won again

Right after the 2011 elections I had written a piece under this title. Today, in the face of the thousand and one tricks of so broad an opposition coalition or alliance, we can put the same title again with the addition of an "and." And again He won.

It seems that as long as the alliance opposite him continues with this mind, we will go on putting up this title after many more elections.

I am writing at a time when close to 30 percent of the ballot boxes across Turkey have been opened. At this point the AK Parti's votes show above 48 percent. The CHP is at around 28 percent, the MHP at 14, and the BDP at around 5 percent. Considering that the BDP ran in Istanbul and the western provinces under a different party, it can be said that its votes reach 7 percent.

This is the third election in the field of local government that the AK Parti, in power alone for 11 and a half years, has entered. In fact, if a comparison is to be made, it should be made with the previous one, the 2009 local election results in which it received 38 percent of the vote, and according to this result it has increased its votes by around 10 percent. The AK Parti, which set a record in Turkish political history by increasing its votes in three consecutive general elections, has repeated this record in local elections by multiplying it several times over.

These results, undoubtedly, are not merely a response by the people to a contest or debate in the field of local government. They need to be seen as the people's reply to the debate that took place particularly in the context of 17 December and, before it, the Gezi Park events. From 17 December onward these elections took on this meaning, and in this meaning the difference of views and attitudes in society was reflected in the ballot box in its clearest form. Despite all the preparation the AK Parti put forth at the level of local elections too, the real deciding factor was the coup debate, which had no connection to local government.

The clear messages that the election results, as they stand, put forth:

While in power and despite so much criticism, the AK Parti increased its votes by 10 points, whereas the CHP, in opposition, could not increase its votes and stood still.

Although in local elections votes were expected to suffer greater losses because of the possibility of being split owing to the candidate factor, the AK Parti's votes increased instead.

The Istanbul voter, who gives more premium to quality of service and reliability than to ideology, did not let Mustafa Sarıgül, prepared with a thousand and one image-building efforts by the central media and the Cemaat, pass. By contrast, giving a meaningful answer to the services of Kadir Topbaş, who in terms of leadership performance displays an apparently extremely modest profile, it said keep going on the road, raising his votes compared to previous elections.

It was clearly seen that the Cemaat displayed this time several times over the performance it had shown in the referendum, as if placing the AK Parti under obligation, in order to block the AK Parti's path. Their only goal was for the AK Parti to lose the election.. so everywhere they openly worked for the candidates who appeared closest to winning against the AK Parti. In the West this was the CHP and the MHP, in the Eastern provinces the BDP. This performance, whose only aim was to make the AK Parti lose, put them into all sorts of guises and a variety of discourses.

Explaining the account of this to the sincere public they face will be what they struggle with most from now on. Even so, this performance of theirs caused not a decrease but an increase in the AK Parti's votes. They seem to have had no decisive effect anywhere on the result. Without Fethullahist support, and moreover with a 10-point increase in local elections, the AK Parti reached around 48 percent.

In this situation, we can expect Kılıçdaroğlu, after a while, to evaluate the AK Parti-Cemaat fight as a plot arranged to increase the AK Parti's votes.

It was seen that the resolution process did not lead to a serious increase in the AK Parti's votes among voters in the Southeast. Moreover, in these elections, compared to past elections, there is no serious pressure on the ballot boxes from either side, with some exceptions. That this picture emerged in this environment is undoubtedly a situation that will need to be assessed and interpreted.

If the AK Parti is the definite, undisputed winner of the results of this election, we can say that another winner is a few polling firms. In particular, we know that Pollmark, Genar, Konda and Anar gave results very close to all these results from the start.

In any case, we wish that these election results bring auspicious outcomes to our country, our region and the whole Islamic world.