Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today hailed a big victory for his ruling party in the country's parliamentary election and demanded the world respect the result.
The ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, secured a stunning victory in yesterday's snap parliamentary election, sweeping back into single-party rule only five months after losing it.
With all of the ballots counted early today, the preliminary results showed that the party won more than 49 per cent of the votes. It was projected to get 317 seats in the 550-member parliament, restoring the party's single-party majority that it had lost in a June election.
Turkish financial assets were buoyant today after the AKP's victory as investors hoped it will bring an end to a long period of political uncertainty.
The Turkish lira was one big beneficiary from the result, surging by 5 per cent or so on foreign exchange markets.
"The whole world must show respect. So far I haven't seen such a maturity from the world," Erdogan said after attending prayers at a mosque and visiting his parents' graves.
It was an apparent reference to Western media's often critical coverage of AKP's policies in the past few years, including the ruling party's backsliding on democratic reforms and moves to muzzle critical voices.
International election observers today noted that elections were free and peaceful but criticized media restrictions in the run-up to the vote, including the seizure by the government of an opposition media company and criminal investigations of journalists for allegedly supporting terrorism or defaming Erdogan.
The observers said the incidents of violence as well as physical attacks on party officials had hindered many of the contestants' ability to campaign freely.
"Unfortunately we came to the conclusion that this campaign was unfair and was characterized by too much violence and by too much fear," Andreas Gross, who headed a delegation of parliamentarians from the Council of Europe, told a news conference in Ankara.
There were no allegations of large-scale fraud. Any hope that Erdogan would ease media repression evaporated today after a court ordered police to seize all copies of a weekly political magazine for suggesting on its cover page that the aftermath of the election would mark the start of a civil war in the country.
Nokta magazine said on its website that its chief editor and a manager were expected to be questioned for allegedly inciting people to violence.
