Buzzfeed quotes Rafik Hariri Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Aaron Stein on the implications of President Erdogan and his party’s victory in the recent Turkish elections:
“It allows the AKP to govern again,” Aaron Stein, a scholar the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Center, told BuzzFeed News. “The government has been so focused on elections that they have let huge matters fall by the wayside.”
But the biggest question that remains is whether the new government will seek to cool down the ongoing war against the PKK, which Turkey has been battling on and off for decades. Modern Turkey was largely built on an ethos of denying rights to minorities, including Kurds, which account for up to 15% of the country. It has been struggling in recent years to recognize minority cultural and political rights without alienating hardline Turkish nationalists. The AKP won its victory Sunday largely by drawing votes from the ultra-nationalist and stridently anti-Kurdish MHP “which signals a hard line against the PKK,” said Stein.