Turkey’s reformist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a resounding victory in early general elections last night, as voters dismissed concerns that he would launch a creeping plan to Islamise the state.

“Our people decided to continue with our party. It is clear that support for us has increased,” Mr Erdogan told a victory party outside the headquarters of his Justice and Development (AK) Party. With more than 99 per cent of the vote counted, unofficial projections had the party on 46.7 per cent, giving it 341 seats in the 550-member Parliament.

The result is a rare increase in support for a ruling party, although, because more smaller parties are represented, AK’s parliamentary majority has actually fallen.

Mr Erdogan is credited with introducing sweeping pro-Western economic and democratic reforms and a rising standard of living in Turkey. The militarist old guard had threatened to intervene against what it, and hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the streets in May, believed to be a government plot to scrap Turkey’s secular traditions.

However, the scale of Mr Erdogan’s victory sent a strong message to the military, judiciary, bureaucracy and main opposition party. “This is the people’s warning,” Hasan Cemal, a leading political commentator, said.

“Democracy has passed a very important test,” Mr Erdogan said. “Whoever you have voted for . . . we respect your choices. We regard your differences as part of our pluralist democracy. It is our responsibility to safeguard this richness.”

The landslide victory is likely to embolden the Prime Minister as he prepares to nominate a presidential candidate in the coming weeks. He was forced to hold early elections after his nomination of Abdullah Gul, the pro-European Union Foreign Minister, whose wife, controversially, wears the Muslim-style headscarf, provoked massive street protests. Objecting in particular to what they regarded as a symbol of backwardness, the self-styled secularist establishment deadlocked Parliament. The fears that they stoked of creeping Islamisation, however, failed to sway the majority of voters. Instead, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) was expected to gain only 20.9 per cent of the vote.

Turnout was high, at more than 80 per cent, as Turkish holidaymakers left beach resorts early and returned home for the unusual summer election. There was less an atmosphere of excitement about this election than a determination to prove a point. “I think voting for CHP is important to preserve secularism and the republic,” Sinan Yilmaz, a 25-year-old security guard, said.

Mr Erdogan, 53, looked tired but relaxed and confident as he voted in an Istanbul school with his wife, Emine, who was wearing a cream headscarf and blue tailored jacket. The Chief of General Staff, General Yasar Büyükanit, was applauded as he cast his vote in the capital, Ankara. The military remains a highly respected institution in Turkey even though many people seem tired of its political interference, the army having ousted four governments since 1960.

The Nationalist Action Party (MHP) is expected to re-enter Parliament as a result of rising nationalist sentiment, fuelled partly by EU criticisms of its aspiring Muslim member. Commentators expect, however, that the MHP and independent MPs will adapt a conciliatory stance to the choice of president, which will be among the first tasks of the new Parliament. Another early decision will be whether to send some of the several thousand troops that are massed close to the southeastern border to crush Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq.

Most AK supporters do not want a more Islamic country. They are a mix of liberals, intellectuals, businessmen and entrepreneurs as well as social conservatives who back the centrist profile of many of its new candidates.

“For the business world a single- party government is important. The result means that Turkey will continue with the pro-Western economic reform process,” Murat Yalcintas, head of the Istanbul chamber of commerce, said.

Power struggle

April 2007 Abdullah Gul, the Foreign Minister, announced as AK Party presidential candidate, prompting secular demonstrations

April 27 The Turkish parliament approves Mr Gul in the first round of voting, but the opposition announces that it will appeal against the result because too few MPs were present for the vote

May 1 The constitutional court annuls the vote

May 2 Mr Erdogan says the court’s decision was like “firing a bullet at democracy”

July 22 early general election held

Late October 2007 Referendum planned to decide whether Turkish people will elect their president

Source: Times archives

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