At last very good news coming out of Turkey as the AKP party loses its majority and the Kurdish HDP party reaches nearly 13%, sufficient to clear the 10% threshold, and gains 82 seats in parliament. Election map with latest results here.
Turkey’s ruling AKP set to lose majority in blow for Erdoğan | Hürriyet News |
More than 53.7 million Turkish voters head to the polls on June 7 for a crucial parliamentary election. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has framed the June 7 election in Turkey as a key hurdle on the path to the powerful presidential system that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to introduce.
However, if the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) crosses the 10 percent election threshold, the number of AKP lawmakers will decrease considerably, making it almost impossible to reach the 330 seats necessary for a constitutional change.
The HDP has faced scores of physical attacks during its campaign. One of its campaign bus drivers, Hamdullah Öğe, was murdered on June 3, and three of its supporters were killed when twin bomb blasts hit its milestone rally in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on June 5.
Election safety has also been a hot item on the agenda during the campaign ahead of the vote, amid the opposition’s claims that there was fraud in the vote counting process. The government has strictly denied the claim and mobilized a total of 404,000 security personnel to maintain security throughout the day of the election.
Kurdish tribes withdraw support for Erdogan’s party as Turkey votes in general election
As voters head to the polls to vote in Turkey’s general election, Kurdish tribes have withdrawn their support for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party over its policy of nonintervention in neighbouring Syria.
Nearly six months after Kurdish fighters forced the Islamic State (IS) group out of the Syrian town of Kobane, the nearby Turkish village of Boydi still bears the battle scars.
Among the homes damaged in Boydi during the fighting was that of Hanefi Tilge, leader of the local Kurdish Didan tribe. “We expected some help at least. The Islamic State group (IS) was attacking us and the government said nothing. We’re Kurds, so Erdogan wasn’t on our side,” he told FRANCE 24.
More global reactions to follow …
