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Turkey's Elections and Strained U.S. Relations
Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won Parliamentary elections
June 12, which means it will remain in power for a third term. The
popular vote, divided among a number of parties, made the AKP the most
popular party by far, although nearly half of the electorate voted for
other parties, mainly the opposition and largely secularist Republican
People’s Party (CHP). More important, the AKP failed to win a
super-majority, which would have given it the power to unilaterally
alter Turkey’s constitution. This was one of the major issues in the
election, with the AKP hoping for the super-majority and others trying
to block it. The failure of the AKP to achieve the super-majority leaves
the status quo largely intact. While the AKP remains the most powerful
party in Turkey, able to form governments without coalition partners, it
cannot rewrite the constitution without accommodating its rivals.
One way to look at this is that Turkey continues to operate within a
stable framework, one that has been in place for almost a decade. The
AKP is the ruling party. The opposition is fragmented along ideological
lines, which gives the not overwhelmingly popular AKP disproportionate
power. The party can set policy within the constitution but not beyond
the constitution. In this sense, the Turkish political system has
produced a long-standing reality. Few other countries can point to such
continuity of leadership. Obviously, since Turkey is a democracy, the
rhetoric is usually heated and accusations often fly, ranging from
imminent military coups to attempts to impose a religious dictatorship.
There may be generals thinking of coups and there may be members of AKP
thinking of religious dictatorship, but the political process has worked
effectively to make such things hard to imagine. In Turkey, as in every
democracy, the rhetoric and the reality must be carefully
distinguished. Read more »
Dispatch: German-Russian Security Cooperation
Analyst Marko Papic looks at the strategies Berlin may use to facilitate
greater security collaboration between Germany and Russia without the
input of the United States. Watch the Video »
