Turkey’s Ruling Party Projected Winner
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Turkey’s Islamic-rooted ruling party was headed toward a parliamentary majority Sunday with nearly half the vote counted, a private news network reported.
CNN-Turk reported after polls closed that the ruling Justice and Development Party won 48.4 percent of the vote, with 58.4 percent of the votes counted, in elections viewed as a key showdown between religious and secular forces. Turkey’s NTV television had similar results.
CNN-Turk projected that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodogan’s party would win 46.9 percent of the total vote, or 334 seats in the 550-member Parliament.
The station based the projection on a survey of 400 polling stations and gave a 1.5 percent margin of error.
The main opposition group, the Republican People’s Party, was in second place with 19 percent of the actual votes counted, the station said.
The election is viewed as pivotal in determining the balance between Islam and secularism in the nation of more than 70 million. The Justice and Development Party has been accused of plotting to scrap Turkey’s secular traditions, despite its openness to the West.
