Shift in AK Party caused by local elections

Hürriyet's Cüneyt Ülsever acknowledges that the AK Party has recently shifted toward the status quo and is becoming more hawkish, which he says could be due to a set of reasons as discussed by many people. "Some say Erdoğan can no longer produce new policies because he is left alone. Some say he is having a mental breakdown because of excessive exhaustion. Some say he preferred to reconcile with the status quo, particularly with the Turkish Armed Forces [TSK], following a closure case filed against his party, at the end of which the AK Party barely escaped closure. You could also say Prime Minister Erdoğan has never been a real democrat or pro-freedom, so he showed his real face," says Ülsever, adding that all of these explanations are true to a certain extent. Social phenomena, he says, are not based on a single reason; reasons have different weights on social phenomena. Ülsever says that his mind, which he says looks for a rational reason behind all social phenomena, pins the change in the AK Party to a simple reason, which is its desire to win the local elections.