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Turkey's ruling party sweeps back to majority in parliament

 
Published Nov. 2, 2015

ISTANBUL, Turkey — In a stunning electoral comeback, the Islamist party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regained its majority in parliament on Sunday, ensuring Erdogan's continued dominance of Turkish politics after months of political turmoil and violence.

The result will permit Erdogan to maintain his position as the country's pre-eminent political figure while pushing the boundaries of the constitutional limits of the presidency, a largely ceremonial position.

With more than 99 percent of the votes counted, according to state broadcaster TRT, the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, captured 49.4 percent of the popular vote, giving it a solid majority of 316 seats in parliament.

The victory for the AKP came at great cost to the cohesion of Turkish society. Critics say Erdogan's divisive rhetoric, by denigrating opponents as terrorists or traitors, helped polarize the country. And a government crackdown on dissent in the runup to the vote, with mobs attacking newspaper offices and a recent raid on a media conglomerate opposed to the government, raised concerns abroad about Turkey's commitment to democracy.

The outcome was also a spectacular upset given that most polls had predicted a result similar to June's national election, which had denied the AKP a parliamentary majority for the first time in more than a decade.

The victory seemed to validate Erdogan's electoral strategy of turning more nationalist, and taking a harder line with Kurdish militants in the southeast, where a long-running war resumed in recent months.