I disagree somewhat with the premise of the article:
Undereducated Turks – easily the majority of the 77-million-strong population – regard Erdogan as their advocate, which is why they have allowed the accusations of graft to slide.
Yes they’re uneducated, but they are increasingly Islamic/fundamentalist as well, that, more than anything else, is what is driving these people to blindly follow the Islam driven AKP. I predicted a AKP win, pointing out the vast majority of Turks live outside the secular enclaves of the bigger cities, they, not the modernists, hold the keys to power, and Islam plays a featured role in their thinking.
The Erdogan phenomenon and a desperate opposition
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s position has been strengthened after Sunday’s local elections. His critics failed because of their repetitive arguments and strategies, says DW’s Baha Güngör.
Erdogan’s conservative AKP party once again triumphed in nationwide local elections in Turkey on Sunday. Meanwhile, his political opponents and critics are desperately trying to recover from the shocking result, which was even more clearly in favor of the AKP than expected.
The opposition parties’ main failure was an absence of convincing arguments, strategies and manifestos. Their attempt in some regions to unite and stand up to the AKP never got off the ground.
How could that have happened? Hadn’t countless corruption accusations surfaced against Erdogan, his family and several members of his government? Wasn’t it a foregone conclusion that voters would teach him a lesson? How could the AKP once again win in populous areas like Istanbul and Ankara, despite rival candidates that were deemed to be very strong? These are some of the questions that beg to be answered after the failure of the anti-AKP front, and after Erdogan’s party increased its share to more than 45 percent of the vote nationwide, compared to 39 percent in local elections five years ago.
