If you read any of the coverage of yesterday’s Turkish election, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the AKP suffered a crushing defeat. Tayyip Erdoğan’s dreams of an imperial presidency appear to be dead, the AKP no longer has a majority of seats in the Grand National Assembly and will be forced into either a coalition or a minority government for the first time since coming to power in 2002 (and go read Aaron Stein for a great breakdown of the various possibilities), and the party performed far below nearly everyone’s expectations (including my own). At the same time, calling this a defeat seems bizarre given that the AKP beat the second place CHP by 15 points and 126 seats and will still control the government, albeit from a weakened position. I wrote about the election today for Foreign Affairs and argued that the election results should not give cause for instant jubilation to the AKP’s opponents:
Imagine a country in which the ruling party—having won three consecutive national elections over the past decade-plus—wins its fourth in a row, beating the second-place party by over fifteen percentage points, and yet nearly every outside observer declares the result to be a disastrous loss for that party. This is the situation in which Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) now finds itself following Sunday’s parliamentary elections. Prime Minister turned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still ensconced in his thousand-room palace, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will remain at his post, and the AKP is going to continue dominating the government as either a minority ruling party or as the lead party in an extremely lopsided coalition. Wherever you look, though, the AKP’s political obituary is being written.
It is easy to understand why schadenfreude reigns supreme among the 60 percent of Turks who voted for a party other than the AKP. In the span of one election, the AKP has gone from 49.8 of the vote and just three seats short of a coveted supermajority in the Grand National Assembly to having to rely on the backing of another party for the first time since it came to power in 2002. Six in every ten Turkish voters cast their ballots for an opposition party, and when taking into account Erdogan’s very public drive for the AKP to win 400 seats in order to give him the increased presidential powers that he so desperately covets, it is in many ways a devastating blow. The path to a formal presidential system—one that many feared would put Turkey on the fast track to full-blown democratic breakdown—has petered out. This in itself is plenty cause for celebration. However, the exuberance that reigns supreme in many quarters should be tempered; although the results of this election will prove good in the long run, the short-term aftermath may prove decidedly unpleasant.
To read the rest, including why I think the AKP’s disappointing performance may counterintuitively empower Erdoğan, please head over to Foreign Affairs.
Ottomans and Zionists 
Sir, I respectfully I disagree with part of your analysis.
First, there was an extraordinarily high swing away from the AKP (from 49.8% in the 2011 general elections or 51.8% for Mr Erdogan in the 2014 presidential elections to 40.8%); this cannot be discounted. Swings of this magnitude do not often happen elsewhere, so perhaps some people might be forgiven their mood?
Second, the AKP is not a monolithic bloc of Erdogan-worshippers. Mr Davutoglu may – perhaps – be offered up as a scapegoat, but was it he who lost the elections? Not immediately, but over time, AKP will do its own analysis of the results.
Third, I think it is both just and inevitable that a party which won 41% of the vote, far ahead of its nearest competitor, should continue to govern; however, the mechanics of a minority government are not quite as you present them. The most powerful institution in the Turkish Constitution is the National Assembly; Prime Ministers have wide powers, but only when they are complemented by a majority in the Assembly do they become potentially all-powerful.
Fourth, Presidential actual and “reserve” powers are at their peak immediately before and (more so) after an election. Once a party has presented its programme and won a vote of confidence (within a 45-day timeframe), the initiative passes to the Prime Minister and the National Assembly. The President has strong veto powers (and the authority to refer laws to the Constitutional Court), but his executive powers are extremely limited.
Now let us discuss one probable scenario: AKP, with the tacit support of one or several opposition party *leaders*, wins the vote of confidence some time in the next few weeks. It remains in power, with a few fresh faces in the Cabinet. Things seem little different to the situation just last week.
But:
The Sayistay* (Court of Accounts – a sort of accounting ombudsman) reports, which were shelved or sometimes not even presented in recent years, will be discussed in the full light of day in the National Assembly.
Should any evidence of wrongdoing be found, in these reports or elsewhere, it is more likely that a National Assembly dominated by the Opposition would investigate them than if it were dominated by the Government. The President and Prime Minister are powerless to prevent this or its consequences.
All parties may present laws. Normally, in Turkey and elsewhere, the Government passes most of them. In the present set-up, not only does the Opposition have an effective veto on Government legislation, but it can, at times, seize the legislative initiative. Turkish Prime Ministers (not Presidents) have wide-ranging powers to rule by decree, but these powers are voted by the National Assembly with time limits. Would an Opposition-controlled National Assembly automatically renew each of these specific powers?
Most of important of all, after that vote of confidence I mentioned above, the authority to dissolve the National Assembly passes to… the National Assembly (obviously bounded by election laws setting upper limits). Normally, the Prime Minister decides, and the National Assembly votes to dissolve itself. But where a Prime Minister does not have a majority, he cannot call an early election; this initiative passes to the National Assembly, which can do it with a vote of no confidence in the Government, followed by dissolving itself.
This is, of course, just one scenario. Let us see how things play out.
* http://www.sayistay.gov.tr/en/?p=2&CategoryId=15