Short version: the ruling government in Turkey didn’t have that great an election night.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has suffered his biggest setback in 13 years of amassing power as voters denied his ruling party a parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002 and gave the country’s large Kurdish minority its biggest voice ever in national politics.

[snip]

Erdoğan campaigned to secure a minimum of 330 seats in the parliament, a three-fifths majority that would have enabled him to call a referendum on the constitution with a view to converting Turkey into a presidential rather than a parliamentary system. But the AKP appeared unlikely to muster even a simple 276-seat majority.

I am not even remotely competent to give a full and in-depth analysis of Turkish political trends, but Erdogan is… not our friend. To put it mildly. And given that the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) – which is comprised of an alliance of Kurds and liberals – will suddenly have eighty seats in Parliament – well. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, is my motto.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Bet big, win big: “The Kurdish party opted to run a unified slate, rather than field independent candidates as it had in the past. But it was a big risk: either it would reach the 10 percent threshold and enter Parliament, or it would be shut out, and its seats would have gone to the A.K.P.” This 10% threshold was apparently designed to keep the Kurds out of the Turkish Parliament in the first place.  It’s going to be interesting to see what happens now.