Transcript
OMER TASPINAR: Given the economic crisis, given the corruption level in Turkey, given all the crises, given the fact that the Constitutional Court just last year tried to ban this political party, it's not a bad result. The problem is that the Prime Minister, as Murat mentioned, set the bar too high and we should ask ourselves why he did set the bar so high?
This is a party that feels very insecure if you ask me. They believe that they to win 50 to 60 percent of the vote to be immune from a military intervention or from a judicial coup. That's the desperation they're in with the belief that only if they have such a huge majority they will be immune and it only exacerbates the already very bad populist tendencies of the government of the AK Party. It is increasingly becoming a populist party, an increasingly insecure party, and unfortunately what we're seeing today, the negative side of these elections if you ask me, is the rise of identity politics in Turkey. Murat is absolutely right that people have voted for their lifestyles.
There is also a problem of nationalism in Turkey now. If you ask who is the victor of these elections, I would say Kurdish nationalism and Turkish nationalism. There is a growing polarization in the country despite some progress on the Kurdish question, democratic progress, despite better relations between Ankara and Erbil in Northern Iraq, there is a problem of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey and there is a problem of rising Turkish nationalism and the Islamic secular polarization if anything appears to be growing worse. So in that sense the only silver lining from this is I hope that the military will realize that judicial coups or military coups against this government will not pay off and it will be counterproductive. If you let democracy run its course in Turkey, the AK Party will probably diminish its votes just like all parties that stay in power for a long time.
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