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| Europe |
| Turkey: Ruling AKP set for clear election victory, survey shows |
| 2007-07-20 |
| (AKI) - Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is poised to capture around 330 parliament seats in Sunday’s elections allowing the Islamic-rooted party to form a single party government, a survey shows. Some 42,5 million Turks are eligible to vote and according to the survey, Sunday's turnout will be around 84 percent. On Tuesday, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would retire from politics if the AKP fails to garner enough votes to form a single-party government, a decision which now seems unlikely if results of the pre-election poll by the A&G Survey company, prove correct. A&G carried out its survey in 65 different cities and 7,208 people from various parts of the country were asked to indicate their political preferences. The survey results show that three parties: the AKP, the secularist left-wing People’s Republican Party (CHP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) will be the only parties to win seats since only they stand to win more than 10 percent of votes needed to ensure representation in parliament. The AKP will have between 47.5 - 50 percent of the votes; the CHP will have between 18 - 21 percent, and; the MHP will have between 13 - 14.5 percent, the survey results indicated. Although other surveys have suggested that the AKP will win some 45 percent of the votes, none had given it a 50 percent share of all ballots cast. A&G head Adil Gur defended his company's results arguing that the surveying techniques used were sound. "The CHP - MHP coalition formula is just wishful thinking, they would win around 200 seats at most", Gur told Adnkronos International (AKI). “The AKP will have between 320 - 330 seats, CHP between 120 - 130 and MHP between 70 - 80," he said. In the 2002 elections the AKP had 34.28 percent of the votes and won 363 seats. However, despite its chances of a greater percentage share in Sunday's elections the party is likely to win less seats this time because of the presence this time of three parties in parliament. In 2002 besides the AKP, only the CHP managed to pass the 10 percent treshold. “Although criticised for having an Islamist agenda by the secularists, the AKP is percieved as a moderate right-wing party standing at the centre of the political spectrum,” said Gur. According to him, only 8 - 12 percent of AKP voters define themselves as religious. “They choose the AKP not for ideological reasons but for sociological. Most of the votes will come from outskirts of metropolitan areas where very poor and uneducated people live," he said. “However, nearly 60 percent of CHP voters have ideological concerns; they are concerned about the secular republic,” Gur said. The far right nationalist MHP which failed to enter parliament in the last elections is set to capitalise on concern over an increase in separatist Kurdish PKK violence, Gur indicated. According to the A&G survey, 25 independent candidates will also be elected, mostly from the south eastern Anatolia region where Kurdish politicians will run as independents. The Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) was unable to pass the 10 percent threshold at a national level in 2002 elections, a situation prompting it to allow its members to run as independents this time round. Candidates standing as independents only need to win 10 percent of the vote in the constituency they are constesting to qualify for parliament. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 I'm not convinced that the AKP is a fire-breathing Islamicist party. I think they're more what we might refer to in the Islamic world as 'mainstream conservative' -- wanting to live in a modern society with technology, elections, rules for elected officials, and peaceful relations with neighboring countries, but also a socially conservative lifestyle. I think of what the Iranians would have if they could just dump the Mad Mullahs™, for example, and think it would be something like that. Anyway, the AKP doesn't worry me very much in the grand scheme of things. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2007-07-20 11:02 |
| #1 Muslims everywhere are chosing Islamofascism. Our leaders are chosing to not let that sink in. |
| Posted by: McZoid 2007-07-20 03:59 |