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          Turkish President: World Should Respect Party's Election Win

   by VOA News

   Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday the world should
   respect his Justice and Development Party's victory in snap
   parliamentary polls, which he described as the people of Turkey voting
   for stability.

   The election Sunday returns Turkey to single-party rule just five
   months after the AKP lost its majority in parliament for the first time
   in more than a decade.  The party won just under 50 percent of the vote
   to hold about 316 seats in the 550-member body.

   The main opposition CHP party won just over 25 percent, a far wider
   margin of victory for the AKP than predicted.

   Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu expressed a desire for unity as he spoke
   to supporters in Ankara late Sunday.  He called for "a new Turkey in
   which politics are normalized."

   "During the campaign process, even if it was inadvertently, if there is
   one person whose heart we broke, angered or offended, may they give us
   their blessing," he said.

   ''

   Davutoglu also renewed calls for a new constitution, something the AKP
   has sought in order to give Erdogan more executive powers.  However,
   even with the new majority in parliament, the party will still be short
   of the votes it needs to push through a new constitution on its own.

   Sunday's vote followed months of rising tensions between the Erdogan
   government and a loose alliance of pro-Kurdish leftists, feminists and
   nationalist Kurds.  The opposition's indirect links to the outlawed
   Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) came under repeated attack from Erdogan
   and his allies during the run-up to Sunday's balloting.

   Hours after the polls closed on Sunday, Erdogan called the election a
   message to Kurdish insurgents in Turkey's southeast that "violence
   cannot coexist with democracy."

   Along with the main CHP opposition, the liberal pro-Kurdish Peoples'
   Democratic Party (HDP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) will
   also be seated in the next assembly.

   In July, the armed wing of the PKK scrapped a three-year-long
   cease-fire with Ankara, after Turkish warplanes struck the group's
   military training bases in northern Iraq while PKK fighters battled
   Islamic State militants. Ankara also bombed several other PKK bases.
   Prime Minister Davutoglu said then the attacks would continue "as long
   as there is a threat against Turkey."

   Last month, the Ankara government blamed the PKK for twin suicide
   bombings at a peace rally in Ankara that killed more than 100 people
   and wounded about 160 others.

   Sunday's vote tallies sparked protests in southeastern Turkey's mainly
   Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.  Government security forces fired tear gas
   at stone-throwing protesters there as support for the pro-Kurdish
   opposition hovered close to the 10 percent voter threshold needed to
   enter the government.

   ''

   VOA Correspondent Luis Ramirez contributed to this report from
   Istanbul.
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   -party-election-win/3032638.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/turkey-president-world-should-respect-party-election-win/3032638.html