Financial Times quotes Rafik Hariri Center Vice President and Director Francis Ricciardone on the outcome of the Turkish election, which ended President Erdogan’s ambitions for a powerful executive office:
The election signified a national rebuff to Mr. Erdogan’s ambitions, a new era of political and perhaps economic uncertainty and, according to many commentators, a return to checks and balances in a political system that had increasingly been characterized as authoritarian.
“The majority of the Turkish electorate evidently chose the uncertainty inherent to parliamentary coalition politics over President Erdogan’s vision of a strong presidential system,” said Francis Ricciardone, a former US Ambassador to Turkey, now at the Atlantic Council, a think-tank.
The result was in line with many pre-election polls. But so dramatically has it changed Turkey’s political landscape that it came all the same as a shock.