Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party was set to win Sunday’s parliamentary election with 50.3 percent of the vote with 95 percent of the votes counted, but looked unlikely to get enough seats to call a referendum on a planned new constitution. If the partial results based on 95 percent of the vote are confirmed, the AK would be forced to seek agreements with other parties to press on with plans to replace the existing charter, written almost 30 years ago during a period of military rule. Based on the incomplete count, AK looked set to win 327 seats, just below the 330 required for a plebiscite and less than the 331 it had in the last parliament, according to broadcaster CNN Turk.
The centre-left CHP was on 25.8 percent while the nationalist MHP was on 13.2 percent, exceeding the 10 percent threshold required for parties to enter parliament, CNN Turk said. There were no significant reports of trouble, even in the restive Kurdish region, where a strong showing by independents fielded by the pro-Kurdish BDP played a big part in denying the AK’s advance. “Our people want the Kurdish issue to be solved through peaceful and democratic methods. We will work for it, and will struggle to meet the demands of Kurdish people with the new constitution,” Serafettin Elci, a prospective Kurdish MP for the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, told Reuters.