ISTANBUL (AP) – Two weeks after Turkey’s parliamentary elections, experts agree on one thing: No one really knows what’s going to happen next.
Turkey’s June 7 election left Turkey’s long-ruling Justice and Development Party, known by Turkish acronym AKP, short of the majority it needs to govern alone, meaning it will have to turn to at least one of the three opposition parties to secure its hold on government.
Negotiating such a coalition will be complicated by the vitriol of the campaign, the differences between the four camps and the ambitions of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, still a dominant force in Turkish politics despite his theoretically neutral role as head of state.
“Neither can I or anyone else make any predictions as to what’s happening,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of Turkish politics at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
Sinan Ciddi, the director of the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University, said he wouldn’t rule out anything either.