Turkish elections—First Update: AKP won, but others did not lose

TURKEY - In Brief 30 Mar 2014 by Atilla Yesilada
It is 6 am in Turkey and at the end of a sleepless night, I still have very little to report except that AKP has won, but CHP, MHP and BDP-HDP are grinning all the way home. From the moment the High Election Council lifted the embargo on reporting election results, the two authorized data dissemination agencies, namely the official Anatolian News Agency (ANA) and pro-Gulen CIHAN announced drastically different numbers. Even by 6 am, the gap between the sources had not closed-below is their respective tallies: Party/Agency ANA (70% of votes counted) CİHAN (90.4% of the votes counted) AKP 46.72 43.19 CHP 28.37 26.26 MHP 14.43 17.65 BDP-HDP 2.80 4.61 (ANA only reports BDP) (My apologies but site editor does not accept Word table format) By zapping 15 different TV channels and listening to dozens of experts I’d estimate the true tally to be something like this: AKP: 44-47% CHP: 25-28% MHP: 15-17% BDP-HDP: 6-6.5% Izmir went to CHP by a margin of more than 15 points, while in Istanbul AKP had a commanding lead of 7 percentage points with only 3% of the vote left to be counted. However in Ankara with 3% of the vote uncounted, AKP-CHP were engaged in a dead heat, with AKP having a slim lead of 0.2 percentage points. Moreover, in 7 other major municipalities led by Adana (MHP marginally ahead) and Antalya (AKP slightly ahead), the race was still too close to call. I expect a recount in all of these cities and perhaps in 4-5 boroughs of Istanbul as well. It is very likely that rival parties will interpret the outcome asymmetrically. Erdogan has already delivered his traditional ”Balcony address”, where he was unforgiving on his enemies led by Gulen Movement “and all its accessor...

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