WASHINGTON POST
by Ishaan Tharoor
June 7, 2015

Turkish voters delivered a dramatic blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice Development Party on Sunday, with results showing it losing its majority in parliament. And, in a historic first, a party dominated by ethnic Kurds surged into the Grand National Assembly in Ankara, marking a new moment in the evolution of Turkey’s democracy as well as a direct challenge to Erdogan’s own ambitions to consolidate power as president. “This is a nuclear explosion in Turkish politics,” said Bulent Aliriza, an expert in Turkey at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Erdogan had been seeking a supermajority to force through constitutional change, but according to the state Anadolu news agency, his center-right party, known by the Turkish acronym AKP, secured less than 41 percent of the vote with 99 percent of ballots counted. Although it is still the biggest party in the country, the AKP suffered its worst result since 2002. READ MORE