Erdoğan Indirectly Asks Public To Vote For AK Party

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called on citizens to “make a decision” in the upcoming snap election so that Turkey will not “go through the current process” again, what some see as tacitly calling on them to vote for the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).

Violence has ensued in the Southeast following a bomb in attack in the Suruç district of Şanlıurfa province on July 22 which claimed 32 lives. In retaliation for the bombing, which they claim was a government security failure, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) killed two police officers in Ceylanpınar, also in Şanlıurfa province, two days after the Suruç blast. This was followed by other attacks on members of the military and police. PKK terrorists have killed more than 60 members of Turkish security forces in the last three weeks.

Speaking at a reception held on Victory Day, marked every year on Aug. 30 in Turkey, Erdoğan blasted the People's Democratic Party (HDP), accusing it of supporting the PKK in its killing of security force members.

He then called on citizens to make a decision in the upcoming Nov. 1 general election such that the turbulence the country is experiencing would not occur again, implying, many believe, that they should vote for the AK Party.

Erdoğan has made little secret of his preference for single-party rule. Speaking to journalists traveling with him on a trip to Asia in late July, Erdoğan warned of what he considered the dangers of fragile coalitions and he extolled the virtues of single-party rule.
In July 2014, then-Prime Minister Erdoğan vowed that despite a constitutional requirement, he would not remain neutral if elected in the August 2014 presidential election, stating: "A president cannot be impartial. No president in this country has been neutral. And I will not be an impartial president either."

In the June 7 general election, no party managed to win the minimum number of seats necessary to establish a single-party government. When the HDP passed the election threshold for the first time in June, it cost the AK Party seats that would have enabled it to form a single-party government. The results came as a huge disappointment to the AK Party, which had ruled Turkey as a single-party government for three terms beginning in 2002, and to Erdoğan, who campaigned for his former party in the run-up to the elections despite the constitutional requirement of impartiality.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)