Turks began voting in an election on Sunday that is expected to return Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to office for a third consecutive term and could give him a mandate to rewrite the constitution.
A Muslim democracy and candidate for the European Union, Turkey has become an economic powerhouse and influential player on the global stage since Erdogan’s AK Party swept to power in 2002. Polling stations in the country of 74 million opened first in the east, including in the restive Kurdish region. There were no immediate reports of trouble. Polls opened later in the west, including in the capital Ankara and Istanbul. “I don’t think the elections will change the government, and I don’t want it to change,” Dursun Ocalir, a 52-year-old retired man, told Reuters. Opinion polls have shown Erdogan set to win four more years of single-party rule in the nation that straddles Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Casting his vote at a primary school being used as a polling station on the Asian side of the Bosphorus straits in Istanbul, Erdogan said the election was the time for the people to speak. “I hope that the elections will contribute to strengthening of peace, rights and freedoms,” he told the television cameras, as his headscarved wife and daughter stood nearby. Erodgan’s support has been built on his success in creating a booming economy and in ending decades of chaotic coalitions, military coups and failed international financial bailouts. The only doubt hanging over Sunday’s vote was about the margin of victory. Erdogan needs more than a simple majority to be certain of pushing through plans for a new constitution to replace one written in 1982, two years after a military coup. Erdogan, whose party evolved from banned Islamist movements, says the new charter will be based on democratic and pluralistic principles that will bring Turkey closer to EU standards.
While foreign investors traditionally have seen AK as the most market-friendly party, Erdogan’s critics say he has an authoritarian streak. They fear he will use his growing power to switch to a more presidential system of government, with an eye on becoming president himself in the years ahead. Opponents also point to rampant use of wiretaps by state agencies, the detention of journalists critical of the government, nepotism and a widening gap between rich and poor. AK, a socially conservative party, held 331 of the 550 seats in the last parliament. Polls show it scoring the same or more. At least 330 seats would give AK the power to call a referendum on rewriting the constitution. If it gets more than a two-thirds majority, it will be able to change the constitution without resorting to a plebiscite.