Turkey election: President Erdogan's victory is bad for the country and the region

Given the choice put to the Turkish electorate by their President – “It’s me or chaos” – it is perhaps not surprising that Recep Tayyip Erdogan has managed to secure an overall majority in his country’s parliament. It is not, however, anything like a mandate for the kind of policy he is thought to want to carry out – a further increase in his own powers. Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was not expected to increase its share of the vote as much as it did, but the 316 seats won still leaves the increasingly autocratic neo-Islamist ruler short of the 330 he would need to begin the process of constitutional change.

It is reasonably suggested that President Erdogan, maybe from a misguided fear of Kurdish separatism, or a miscalculation that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”, turned a blind eye to the Islamic militants now destroying Iraq and Syria. If the West is to work with Mr Erdogan – and work with him, to a large degree, it must – then assurances must be given that such a lackadaisical approach to Isis is a thing of the past. On top of that, now that Mr Erdogan has won his election, he must be pressured to restart the peace process with the Kurdish PKK, with many seeing the recent reigniting of hostilities as an electoral strategy first and foremost.

Nothing less than the stability and prosperity of Turkey itself, and Europe and the Middle East more widely, is at stake. The violence the Turkish people can witness across their borders, and the terrorist attacks they have had to endure on their soil, have left them in a state of fear, and people often turn to the right and a devil they know in such conditions.

So far, President Erdogan has done little to show how he will secure Turkey’s future and work with all of his neighbours in the region to do so. Inadvertently, the Turkish people may indeed end up with chaos.