After AKP, What?
Turks are unhappy about the case before the Constitutional Court to close down the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). If the party is closed down and new elections are held, none of the other parties will have enough votes to create a functioning government and at present there are no viable alternative centrist parties. Voting patterns will lose their moorings and the outcome is anyone’s guess.
A new opinion poll, reported in Today’s Zaman, shows that the majority of Turkey’s population seees the court case against the ruling AKP in general as “political”, rather than “legal” and see the case against President Abdullah Gul in particular as “illegal”. Most do not see the AKP as a threat to Turkey’s secular regime. If they were to cast votes today, AKP’s share of votes would rise.
But if the AKP were closed down, the poll shows chaos in voting patterns. 21 percent of voters across the board said they would shift votes to a new party. The poll predicts 23 percent of AKP voters, 17 percent of CHP voters and 17 percent of MHP voters would vote for a different party if the AKP were shut down. (The nationalist MHP likely would no longer meet the 10% minimum to be represented in parliament.) Sixty-four percent of AK Party voters said they would either cast an invalid vote, or were undecided as to what they would do. About one-third of AK Party voters said they might vote for another party. There is, however, at present no viable alternative party to take the place of the centrist AKP.
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