JERUSALEM, Israel -- Turkish leaders were buoyed by Sunday's election results, giving their Islamist AKP Party a clear parliamentary majority, with 49.4 percent of the vote. That could translate to at least 315 seats in the 550-seat parliament, returning Turkey to single-party rule five months after AKP lost last June's elections.
"Today is a victory for our democracy and our people," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who also heads AKP, said, thanking Allah for the results.
According to Turkish media, CHP (Republican People's Party) won 25.4 percent, MHP (National Movement Party), and HDP (Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party) 10.7 percent of the vote.
The Jerusalem Post quoted a senior member of the CHP, the main opposition party, who called the results "simply a disaster."
Unfortunately for Erdogan, Sunday's vote failed to give him the supermajority needed to change the country's constitution, thereby paving the way to expand his presidential powers.
During his tenure as prime minister from 2003 to 2014, when he became president, Erdogan alienated a growing segment of the population, with many resenting his authoritarian-style leadership and efforts to impose Islam on the country's traditional secular democracy.
His consistent crackdown on media and free press, the military, the judiciary, the Kurdish population, and his strong support of Islamic lifestyle, diminished his popularity.
Some analysts attribute the AKP Party's victory Sunday to a public perception that it will increase the country's stability in an increasingly unstable Middle East.
In an analysis published in Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News, entitled "An election with many losers and one winner: Erdogan," Turkish author Mehmet Y. Yilmaz writes, "There is only one meaning to the outcome of these elections: Turkey is dragged into a one-man dictatorship."
"In normal democracies, every election causes the political tensions to drop. But, here, the fact the elections resulted this way is that the palace's aggressive and 'otherizing' polices are accepted. This acceptance means that this country, for a long time, will not find peace," he writes.
"Let us repeat the famous principle: The people get the government they deserve," Yilmaz concludes.
Meanwhile on Sunday, ISIS posted its first video from a city in southern Turkey documenting beheadings of an anti-ISIS Syrian activist and his friend, Arutz Sheva reported.
According to the report, ISIS jihadists beheaded media "activists" Ibrahim Abdul Qadar, 20, and his friend, Fares Hamadi, Friday for conspiring "with the Crusaders against the Islamic State."
"May every apostate know that he will be slaughtered silently," the narrator warns.
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