Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has seen his electoral gamble pay off. His AK party has been returned to power with a governing majority in the unicameral parliament. He has not, however, won the two-thirds majority he needed if parliament alone were to change the constitution and give him sweeping executive powers as president. He must now look to a referendum to achieve this goal. But that referendum seems unlikely to be held any time soon. Turks have voted for what they believe will be stability, not change. In addition to a renewed war with the Kurdish PKK terrorists, Turkey now finds itself in the frontline of the battled against Daesh (so-called IS). At a time of crisis, the electorate has chosen a strongman. The idea that Erdogan himself may have helped bring about that crisis since, after 13 years of unchallenged power, his AKP lost their majority in June's general elections, clearly did not worry the swing voters who in the summer had deserted the AKP for the Kurdish-based HDP and the largest opposition grouping the CHP. Erdogan and his Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sought to demonize the HDP during the election, accusing them of supporting the PKK terrorists. During the campaign thugs trashed HDP offices, while police did little to intervene. The party lost seats on Sunday but still passed the ten percent threshold meaning that it has 59 seats, 21 fewer than in the last election. If Erdogan remains true to his imperious form, it can be expected that the HDP and its legislators, not least its charismatic leader Selahettin Demirtas, will be accused of some form of treason. The full power of the country's formidable intelligence organization, the MIT, is likely to be unleashed against the HDP in the same way as it tackled Erdogan's one time political ally Islamist leader Fethullah Gulen. In targeting the HDP, the government will also be aiming at the liberals who have seen the pro-Kurdish party as the best chance of challenging an over-mighty Erdogan. It is not too fanciful to imagine that one of the early acts of the new AKP administration will be to drive through the controversial redevelopment of the Gezi Park in the heart of Istanbul. This pet project of Erdogan, a former mayor of Turkey's commercial capital, led to major liberal and middle class protests last year which were brutally broken up by police. But Erdogan also has more pressing issues. The renewed war with the PKK is less of a challenge than the tensions Turkey is facing over Syria. Once warm and lucrative commercial relations with Moscow are strained as Russia puts boots on the ground to help Assad. US pressure to stop Daesh using Turkey as a supply base means Daesh has begun to attack it. Erdogan's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, not least in Libya to which Turkish arms have been sent to militants while wounded militants have come to Turkey for treatment, is also exposing him to rising international censure. And then there is the economy. Although shares and the Turkish currency bounded in value on news of the AKP win, the country is facing an economic downturn only partly of its own making. But when Erdogan claimed falling markets were the result of an international conspiracy, he demonstrated a macroeconomic illiteracy that does not suggest he will cope well as the economic downturn bites.
