The AKP had more than 53 percent of the vote with 42 percent of the ballot boxes opened, CNN-Turk television reported. Opinion polls had predicted the party would win about 40-43 percent, short of the vote needed to ensure a parliamentary majority.
Millions of Turks turned out to vote Sunday in one of the most crucial elections in years, with the country deeply divided in the face of surging Kurdish and Islamic violence and mounting concerns about democracy and the economy.
The poll was the second in just five months, called after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) was stripped of its parliamentary majority in June for the first time in 13 years and failed to forge a coalition government.
Opinion polls were predicting a replay Sunday, leaving the strategic Muslim-majority nation of 78 million at risk of further instability just as it faces what some warn are existential threats.
Voting ended at 1400 GMT but exit polls are banned and first official results are not due until around 1800 GMT.
Around 385,000 police and gendarmes were mobilised nationwide, with security particularly high in the restive Kurdish majority southeast, where armored vehicles and police were seen outside polling stations.
The political landscape has changed dramatically in Turkey since June, with the country even more polarized on ethnic and sectarian lines...
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State-run TRT television says that preliminary results in Turkey's crucial parliamentary election suggest a surprising boost for the ruling party...
ReplyDeleteIt said that with more than 88 per cent of the votes counted, the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has won just below 50 per cent, which would comfortably restore its ruling majority.
The result could still change significantly as votes come in from disparate regions of the country, but early indications suggest that the ruling party's gamble to hold new elections has paid off. Supporters at the party's Istanbul headquarters were already waving flags in a rapturous celebration........The Associated Press