A big win for democracy in Turkey

 Before election day millions of voters took the time to wait for hours in lines to get the updated version of the national identity card required by the election authorities. Similarly on election day millions took the trouble to wait for hours in lines to cast their votes in a rather cumbersome process whereby votes are cast in three different ballot boxes. No less than 84 percent of the electorate turned out, increasing the rate of participation by 10 percent as compared to the previous local elections held five years ago. The very high turnout rate is surely a clear manifestation of the Turkish people's trust in democracy as the best form of governance.

 The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) garnered 39 percent of the vote, 3 percent less than in the local elections of 2004, and 8 percent less than the general elections of 2007. The electorate thus displayed its decreasing satisfaction with the performance of the governing party, signaling a warning to it that it may indeed unseat the AKP in the next general elections if the trend continues. The AKP did, however, get as large a part of the vote as would be necessary to keep it single-handedly in power if this were a general election. So the election results for the ruling AKP constituted both a warning to correct its mistakes and also a vote of confidence for it to continue to govern. The electorate in Turkey has thus indicated that it still strongly supports the governing party, which was unfairly and unconvincingly declared by the Constitutional Court to have become a "focal point of anti-secular activities." The electorate also indicated that it is in favor of political stability and strongly against a return to the infighting coalition governments responsible for the "lost decade" of the 1990s.

 It was evident in this local election that, like in all elections, most of those who side with the secular nationalism it represents, including the majority of Alevis, voted for the Republican People's Party (CHP); most of those who favor the religious nationalism it embodies cast their votes for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP); and most Kurds who are concerned about their ethnic identity voted for the Democratic Society Party (DTP). And the AKP was able to preserve its catchall party character, garnering votes from all social segments and regions, in support of both its cultural conservatism on the one hand and its political economic reformism on the other.

 The 8 percent of votes lost by the ruling AKP to the main opposition parties can be primarily explained by the worsening economic conditions. The growth rate fell to 3.5 percent last year, and the economy is expected to shrink this year, with unemployment already rising to over 13 percent and the number of unemployed to nearly 3.5 million. That the AKP is still able to garner 39 percent of the vote can best be explained by the 7 percent average annual growth between 2002 and 2007, which tripled per capita income to over $10,000.

 The most successful party of the local elections is certainly the pro-Kurdish DTP, which has regained from the AKP the status of being the party with the largest following in Turkey's Kurdish-majority regions of the Southeast and the East. The DTP won the mayoralties of three more provincial capitals, and its vote in Diyarbakır, the largest city of the region, rose remarkably from 43 percent in 2007 to 65 percent. The main reason leading to this result, surely, is the failure by the state and also the government of Turkey to fully understand that the essence of the Kurdish problem in Turkey is the demand by the country's Kurds for recognition of their ethnic and cultural identity, for which the DTP has increasingly become the main representative when other parties have grossly failed.