The main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) presidential candidate Muharrem İnce got 58.1 percent of the vote in CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s hometown of Tunceli, while Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş got 21.1 percent of the vote. Despite this, the HDP’s vote in the same province is 52.1 percent, while the CHP’s vote remained at 26.6 percent. I gave the Tunceli example not in the sense of Kılıçdaroğlu’s disappointment in his hometown, but more so as it is the most striking example to the agreement between the CHP, HDP and İnce.
If you say let’s get on to Tunceli, I can ask how we are going to interpret the HDP securing seats in Parliament with 98,718 votes in Hatay, while Demirtaş’s votes could not exceed 21,000.
This does not apply to these regions alone; when you look at the arithmetics of the 81 provinces individually, you are able to clearly see the traces of this agreement in more places.
It appears that part of the CHP voters that feel, “Let’s get the HDP to pass the threshold, let’s secure a few seats in Parliament, otherwise we cannot punish [President Recep] Tayyip Erdoğan,” displayed a reflex.
Meanwhile, we faced the reality that some HDP voters said, “He doesn’t have a chance anyway, let’s do whatever we can to make Erdoğan lose,” risking Demirtaş’s rising tension and increasing his pace coefficient in prison, and turned toward İnce.
İnce received votes from Diyarbakır, Hakkari and Mardin, giving rise to the thought, “Yes, this choice was made purposefully.”
We can get two headlines from between the lines of this section of the article:
-Kurds took action at the cost of HDP failing to pass the threshold.
-It wasn’t Kurds that pushed HDP over the threshold but the CHP voters who felt it was more important to topple Tayyip Erdoğan than being soldiers of Mustafa Kemal.
In this case, we can give good news on two critical issues that concern Turkey’s future.
First, the wave of ethnic Kurdish nationalism that peaked with the 2015 elections seems to have calmed.
Second, Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) being able to achieve a higher vote rate than the November 2015 elections from Kurdish voters has hindered the “political division” that may lead to physical division as well.
Eventually, even though the HDP passed the threshold, we can say that is was unsuccessful at realizing its most important political project of “turning the region HDP-PKK.”
From MHP to İYİ PARTY, FROM AK Party to MHP
I had shared with you data based on research conducted by Konsensüs during the election campaign period that 15 percent of voters would change their vote preference.
If this rate is 15 percent, we can say that the CHP-HDP voters hold a significant place. But not this much.
When we study it individually for all 81 provinces, it appears that a significant rate of the AK Party’s votes shifted to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). A look at especially Central Anatolia and the Black Sea gives a clear view of this picture.
Analyzing the Aegean and the Mediterranean separately, we saw a serious shift of votes from the MHP to the Good (İYİ) Party, and a serious shift in Central Anatolia and Black Sea provinces from the AK Party to the MHP.
I don’t know whether to call this the spirit of time or something else, but I can say that we are face to face with a situation that may require all the cliché political analyses to be reviewed anew.
Election disappointment: Meral Akşener
Another set of data that was interpreted prior to the election and whose accuracy was tested on the evening of June 24 is the confirmation of the statement that the İYİ Party’s presidential candidate Meral Akşener’s spark faded in the campaign period.
The moment same-type politician İnce took to the stage on behalf of the CHP, the votes that were inclined to Akşener started to return to their own address. Once it became certain that İnce would be second, this regress furthered.
Despite being the only actor in the visible domain, getting less votes than her party’s votes could mean that Akşener’s future will also be questioned by her closest staff.
Everyone is asking if there could be a new emergency assembly at the CHP, but it could also be said that a similar process may develop for the İYİ Party as well.
One of the other most striking analyses of this election is that although the opposition bloc had serious motivation while heading toward June 24, it was unable to collect a significant amount of votes from the big cluster in the ruling party front.
We had said, “We predict that İnce and Akşener will share the votes in the pool of 35-38 percent,” and that is what happened. And with that being the case, “The man won.” As a matter of fact, for the 13th time in a row.
