EGF Turkey File, 16 March — 15 April 2014

Insights into Turkish Domestic and International Politics

16 March — 15 April 2014

By John VanPool, EGF Turkey and Black Sea Regional Analyst

Key Points:

• The AKP emerges victorious in the country"s municipal elections, capturing nearly 43 percent of all votes.
• Opposition parties fare better than in previous contests, but their split gives the AKP the upper hand at the ballot box.
• His party"s success means that Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan will likely run for the presidency in August"s first ever election by popular vote.
• Erdogan"s government blocks social media sites, referring to critics as "enemies" and further degrading political discourse in the Republic.
• Recordings of high-level military and political meetings continue to leak to the public, and are used by the AKP as justification to push for bans of many social media platforms.
• The presence of hundreds of thousands of mainly Sunni Syrian refugees in southern Turkey continues to concern Turkey"s Alevi communities.
• The situation in Syria remains static, but a large-scale military escalation has the potential to severely destabilize Turkey"s southern provinces.