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Eighteen parties are on the ballot
Voting has ended in parliamentary elections in Turkey, with opinion polls predicting victory for a new party with Islamic roots.In what could be one of the country's most dramatic elections, the recently-founded Justice and Development Party (AK) is expected to inflict a heavy defeat on the parties of the ruling coalition.
The party's deputy head, Abdullah Gul, said early results suggested it would win enough votes to form a government alone.
Many Turks blame for the government for the economic crisis of the past two years and analysts predict that none of the coalition's three parties will cross the required threshold of a 10% share of the vote to get into parliament.
They say that popular disillusionment with policies of the well-established parties, their bickering and even corruption, appears to be turning voters away from them in droves.
Elections were called 18 months early after the coalition government collapsed due to bitter in-fighting and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's long illness. Mr Ecevit is now retiring.
Erdogan's survival fight
The election campaign has focused almost entirely on Turkey's economic crisis and the need for political stability after years of a divisive coalition politics. AK - which says it has severed links with Islamic militancy and wants to promote pro-western policies - says it will form a government on its own.
"We are about to hold an election whose results are obvious in advance for the first time," AK leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an election broadcast.
"Turkey wants justice, wants development."
But analysts say the party has first to overcome the legal obstacles in its way.
The state prosecutor has launched an attempt to ban Mr Erdogan from campaigning as party leader because an earlier conviction for inciting religious hatred meant that he should have stepped down from his party posts. Instead he has refused to name another party leader and has spearheaded AK's campaign.
The case will be heard by the Constitutional Court in two weeks time.
If AK wins, the legal tangle could prevent Mr Erdogan from becoming prime minister.
End for old order
Opinion polls predict that the parties which have dominated Turkish politics until now - True Path, the Motherland Party, the nationalist MHP and Mr Ecevit's Democratic Socialists - will be swept aside by AK.
The only exception is Turkey's oldest party - the staunchly secular Republican People's Party (CHP) - which failed to win any parliamentary seats in the last election.
"It's now a two-horse race. The AKP will be the only conservative party, the others will fall under the (10%) threshold," Mr Erdogan was quoted by daily Radikal as saying.
However, opinion polls in Turkey have a reputation for being unreliable, and experts say that at least three other parties - may get the required 10% of the vote to sit in parliament.
Turkish laws require all of the country's 41 million eligible voters to cast their votes or face a fine.
Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2392717.stm
is the new buzz word of the moment, so I would be loath to judge the party on religious roots rather than policies and how they plan to implement them.