An end to ‘blue blood’ politics?

Will June 8, 2015, the day after Turkey’s June 7 general election, be a day of defeat for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)?

I am not a good election forecaster. I only know that if the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) passes the 10 percent military coup threshold, then it may be. 

The defeat and the disappointment of the AKP may grow like a snowball.

Is there such a possibility?

The AKP, in the last local elections, received 43 percent of the votes in the city council elections. Election survey companies are forecasting this same percentage for the coming elections as the best scenario. 

If Turkey was a normal country (in other words, if we did not have a constitution created by a military regime and a 10 percent election threshold), what would the situation be?

What would it be like if this was Germany?

In the last German elections, the ruling party (the Christian Democrats) received 42 percent of the vote, the second party (the Social Democrats) got 24 percent, and the third party got 8.5 percent. And what happened? Even then Merkel was not able to form the government alone.

When we take a look at our previous local elections, the ruling AKP received 43 percent of the votes, the runner-up Republican People’s Party (CHP) got 26 percent, and the third-placed Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) got 14 percent.

Look more closely. The situation is the same as it is in Germany. Turks voted just like the Germans. The vote distribution is the same but parliament is exactly the opposite. The AKP won a landslide victory with 40 percent of the votes. The rest is a “Turkish-style democratic freak show.”

A mentality without the slightest sense of democratic culture says it “owns all of Turkey” with just over 40 percent of the votes. On the other hand, the other half of society feels like an outcast, a minority in the country.

In this election, Turkey might have the opportunity to put an end to a mentality that considers itself the “all-powerful,” “blue-blood dominant ruling class.”   

For this reason, now, starting with the AKP, everyone should start brainstorming a “post-Erdoğan” era.
Let us start…

Could there be an AKP-CHP coalition? Ankara has started discussing this option. If the HDP passes the threshold and a vote distribution similar to Germany’s emerges, let us review the German model. The first party with 42 percent of votes formed a coalition with the second party with 24 percent of the votes. In other words, a center-right and center-left coalition, the Turkish version of which is an AKP-CHP coalition…

The coalition model

A coalition of the center-right and center-left may start a restoration period that will put together a collapsed state, and establish justice and democracy on solid foundations. It would remove the difference between the “first-class” and “second-class” citizen difference. It would decrease polarization. People with a “modern lifestyle” would build confidence for their country. The Kurdish peace process could be adopted through the grassroots. The peace process would stop being simply an issue of the AKP and the HDP. In other words, it would stop being an Islamic-Kurdish imposition and become a general, common Turkish sentiment.

A coalition would avert the danger of one-man rule, stopping discussions about the presidential system.

The “one-man” foreign policy would also change. This “Sunni-based, individual” foreign policy, which has cost Turkey and the region too much, would change with such a vote.