It is less than four weeks left to the election day. There are other candidates too, but it is very likely that the contest will be between the AK Party’s candidate and the main opposition CHP’s candidate who had won the race for the metropolitan municipality of Istanbul on March 31.
Because all of us, as commentators, have focused on the Supreme Electoral Council’s decision for a re-run and then its reasoned decision, we couldn’t find the opportunity to examine the essential question.
I guess it is time to do so.
The essential question here is this: How will CHP manage to sustain the votes that allowed its candidate to win the last election, and what should AK Party do to increase its votes further this time?
Please don’t tell me, “Some AK Party votes were stolen!” Even within AK Party’s electorate, only a few buy this argument. AK Party supporters see the re-run as ‘the rabbit pulled out of the hat‘ and expect the same thing to happen again. [In June 7, 2015 presidential election, AK Party got around 40 percent of votes and lost its position as the majority in the Parliament. It decided to go for an early election, and managed to hold power by winning nearly 50 percent of votes six months later in that snap election. -TN]
Limits of AK Party and CHP