They are smiling at us from the pages of a newspaper, from within photo frames...
As presidential decrees that have come one after the other have severely changed the institutional structures of the Turkish government, it goes without saying the Foreign Ministry has been subjected to the greatest of risks here.
Two years have passed since the July 2016 failed coup attempt. In these two years, important progress has been made regarding the trial processes of the perpetrators of this coup attempt, which targeted Turkish democracy.
One of the most contentious pictures drawn by the June 24 snap parliamentary elections was how the votes of the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) decreased in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast, and how the Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) votes increased in the same region.
The title of my column on July 22, two days before the snap presidential and parliamentary election, was: “Will Erdoğan be able to win the rematch in Istanbul?”
One of the most critical unknowns of this election was the result the İYİ (Good) Party would receive in the elections. The votes it would’ve gotten especially from the right-wing base would have a determining effect on the election results of both the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
Looking solely at numbers, we need to highlight how the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on June 24 fell into a downward spiral, dropping below the 25 percent barrier it succeeded since the 2011 general elections.
We can understand the importance of the MHP’s support for Erdoğan by using other validation methods as well. When we add the 5.5 million votes that the MHP received in the parliamentary race to the 21.3 million votes that the AKP received, we get 26.9 million votes. This number is around 600,000 votes higher than what Erdoğan received on June 24.
A number of broad points can be made about the results that emerged from Turkey’s parliamentary and presidential elections on June 24.
