ISTANBUL/muscat - Turkey on Sunday votes in legislative elections with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted ruling party facing the biggest poll challenge of its 13 years in power as it seeks a mandate to change the constitution.
Erdogan, who served as premier for over a decade before becoming president in August last year, wants the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that he co-founded to secure a two-thirds majority to change basic law and transform Turkey to a presidential system from a parliament-based one.
But after winning three crushing victories in general elections in 2002, 2007 and 2011 there are signs support for the AKP is beginning to weaken as the economy slows and controversy grows over what critics see as Erdogan’s authoritarian tendencies. Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have criss-crossed the country in an all-out campaign to reach out to Turkey’s 56 million voters, under the election slogan “They talk but the AKP acts.”
The main uncertainty is whether the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) - which also courts support from women and gays with its liberal social policies - can overcome the tough 10 percent threshold needed to win seats in the 550-member parliament.
Should it surmount that hurdle, the AKP’s ambitions of winning the two-thirds majority (367 seats) needed to change the constitution written in the wake of the 1980 military coup could lie in tatters.