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Jerome Delay/AP
VICTORY:
Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) supporters celebrate outside their party's headquarter in Istanbul
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Decision Time in Turkey |
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Turkey's Justice and Development party wins big, but will it live up to its name?
By STEPHAN FARIS/Konya |
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Posted Sunday, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2002
Officials in the Istanbul headquarters of the True Path Party tried hard to stay optimistic. But the votes were steadily being tallied, and the numbers barely moved. The party faithful, sunk in their chairs, paid less and less attention to the big-screen television where supporters of the winning party danced in the rosy light of burning flares, celebrating their victory over an unpopular government. "They don't see that they are going from the prison to the dungeon," said Mehmet Sicklik Ensari, a parliamentary candidate for the center-right Turkish party.
You could forgive him for being bitter. His group was running in third place Sunday, far behind Justice and Development (AK), the party of former Islamists that was sweeping to victory. As the hours wore on, True Path's take would creep up, but stop just short of the 10% needed to enter parliament. Overnight, they would go from having 85 of the 550 seats to having zero. Party leader Tansu Ciller, a former Prime Minister, would step down the next morning.
It's not that there was no support for the right wing. True Path had split a sizable vote nearly evenly with the Nationalists Action Party, and neither managed to get in. There were similar scenes scattered across Turkey's fragmented political landscape. At least four parties flew center-left banners. On the radical fringe, the Communist Party of Turkey vied with the Worker's Party and cut into votes for the Freedom and Solidarity Party. The populist Young Party took from everybody.
In the final tally, only two parties made the cut: The center-left Republican People's Party would form the opposition with 19% of the vote. AK's 34% brought it 363 parliamentary seats, just a few short of the two thirds needed to change the constitution. Forty-seven percent of the electorate had voted for neither party.
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