Turkish general election, June 7th 2015

[minionofmidas]

They have a truly awful electoral system : 85 districts electing 2 to 31 members through D’Hondt PR. BUT, you have to get 10% of the vote nationally to be eligible to this way of repartition! AND if you fail to hit 10% nationally, even if you get 9.9%, all your votes get transferred to… the leading party nationally. -____-"

Um, no.

(Yes, I see the unsourced line in the wiki article that can be understood to mean that. But it doesn't. What happens is that as the no. of seats per constituency is fixed, if a lot of the vote in any one province falls prey to the threshold then the seats can be won on very low vote numbers. Elections up to and including 2002 were often hilarious in that respect. Heck, everything about the military-operated quasi-democracy of the 90s was hilarious if you didn't have to live in it.)

[minionofmidas]

The main question mark is therefore whether HDP will make it to the threshold. If so, AKP’s life could be a bit more complicated. If not, that’s 9% lost votes automatically granted to them, and they should win big.

Incidentally, this is true in practice though not in theory - since the results all over Kurdistan* will presumably be along the lines of HDP 45-60, AKP 35-50, Kemalists at joke levels, again.

[minionofmidas]

The main question mark is therefore whether HDP will make it to the threshold. If so, AKP’s life could be a bit more complicated. If not, that’s 9% lost votes automatically granted to them, and they should win big.

Incidentally, this is true in practice though not in theory - since the results all over Kurdistan* will presumably be along the lines of HDP 45-60, AKP 35-50, Kemalists at joke levels, again.

In the presidential election, the CHP actually beat out the AKP in Eskişehir. What was the deal there?

The AKP never took more than three of the six seats there, so hardly an unusual result.

No idea what's driving relative Kemalist strength there and couldn't do any better than guessing that the usual reasons (settlement of post 1918 DPs, military presence) also apply here.

[minionofmidas]

Yes, that is perfectly correct.

[minionofmidas]

I'm not familiar with patterns inside Istanbul, could you describe the broad areas of good performance of each candidate ? Demirtas seems to poll better in the second circle of the city, not the centre and not the exurban areas, why would that be ?

I think those strong Demirtas areas are plenty far on the outskirts of the city. The three outermost districts, though officially in the city, are essentially countryside.

Anyways, the one is a 60s/70s built banlieue with lots of Kurdish rural migrants and the other is a 90s/2000s built banlieue with lots of Kurdish rural migrants.

[minionofmidas]

Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman HDP, thanked imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan for supporting peace after HDP wins representation in parliament and denies the ruling AKP a single-party govt.  This does not sound like the words of a party that is about to go into an alliance that includes MHP.  If so we are looking at HDP supporting AKP from the outside or HDP joining AKP in an alliance.

It doesn't sound like the words of a party that is about to go into an alliance, full stop.

This may be crazy, but could the MHP prop up AKP?

I was about to ask the same question.

What would the MHP demand in return though...?

End to negotiations with the PKK.

Also, just power, ministers. They are not particularly ideological. They sat with the Democratic Left in the 90s, despite having been formed as an anti-Communist death squad.

That's because the CHP's claim to be to the AKP's left on any meaningful dimension is a joke, and meant as such.

[minionofmidas]

DSP and CHP. Two parties (for a time), one vote base, one ideological current.


Anyways, looking over the results, the DHP completely cleaned the AKP's clock in Kurdistan, while its much heralded breakthrough in the cities is a thing, of sorts, but quite a minor thing. So Kobane lost the AKP the election.

[minionofmidas]

If they're secular, how does secular conservatism nationalism have such a big following in a poor country?

You may have heard of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Of course but there's already a party for secular nationalists, the CHP. I don't get why a secular nationalists would go for the MHP instead. Presumably because they are conservatives but I'm just having a hard time imagining conservative and secular being that large of a demographic in a poor country. 

Just to clarify things, "secular conservatives" used to vote parties like the DYP or the more nationalistic ANAP. Nowadays the Kemalist conservatives are represented by the Democratic Party or DP, which in last elections got a ridiculous share of vote arguably because a a majority of voters who identify with Kemalism back the present incarnation of the CHP.

... but mostly because a majority of voters who identify with the (original, Adnan Menderes. And thus moderate Kemalist, if you want. Or Kemalist + Democracy - open hostility to religiouses. + a new rural policy to lighten the load on smallhold farmers, back in the day. Which was probably the most important component at the time but doesn't much matter for this discussion) DP tradition vote AKP, which has been courting that tradition hard ever since being taken over by Erdogan and reinventing itself under its current name.

Really, if you think about it, the logical coalition partner for the AKP among the three on offer is the CHP, and by a country mile. Still can't really see it happen, though.

[minionofmidas]

Well duh. We all know how it ended for Menderes. I am talking in the terms of a political current - a tradition - here, not a party organization. Worth noting the DYP used the Menderes Democrats' horse symbol (which is essentially a Robin Hood symbol ... not all that befitting the latter-day DYP. )

[minionofmidas]

Really, if you think about it, the logical coalition partner for the AKP among the three on offer is the CHP, and by a country mile. Still can't really see it happen, though.

Wouldn't coalescing with the AKP be the kiss of death for the CHP, given that opposition to the AKP is one of their electorate's most strongly-held positions?

Kiss of death is probably too harsh, but yes the CHP knows that coalescing with the AKP is not going to go over well (it would at the least have to look like a Grand Coalition... and even that is probably better for the AKP in the long run... but I can't see Erdogan climbing that far down from his high horse, either.) I was using polite understatement when I said "can't really see it".
But would joining the government be good for the MHP? It certainly wouldn't be good for HDP.