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International Politics Pre-Election Polls in Turkey 2007 Ring, Ring! The AKP is back. And how... A Crushing Pre-Election Poll for Secular Political Parties... Q: If the election were held today..? The AKP buries the secular also-rans! Besides the AKP, only the CHP and 'Undecided' can even pass the 10% mandatory vote-count barrier. Note comparison with 2002 Election Results, at mid-right... Click for enlargement! Thanks for: 'Pre-Election Poll' to Tempo Magazine May 2007 Related: Final Results Charts for the 2007 National Elections The Next Turkish President Must Not Be.... When Worlds Collide -- Kemalist Democracy and the AKP 2/2 Polls and more... The Turkish Pre-Election 2007 The Unraveling of the Turkish Secular Movement The early-election signs for Turkish secularists were grim. Even after their supporters mounted impressive 'Turkish Republic Protest Marches' (Cumhuriyet mitingler) against the religous-right AKP ruling government in April (first in Ankara, then Istanbul) and then again in May (spectacularly, in Izmir), the secularist Political Parties just couldn't get untracked. Oh sure...They made noises about consolidating their splintered forces (then represented by 17 different political parties) in order to take advantage of their overwhelming majority -- but instead they remained bogged down by indecision, infighting, and second-guessing. The work of losers... What the pre-election campaign polls predicted... Hot on the heels of the Ankara and Istanbul secular protest mitingler, Tempo Magazine published the first pre-election poll of the early-election campaign -- conducted by A&G Research. To the surprise and disbelief of secular pundits, it showed the AKP way out in front -- winning the approval of (what was thought at the time to be an 'astonishing') 41.3% of those polled. (See Tempo's complete Pre-Election Poll Results above right.) Also ('astonishingly') the poll showed that those impressive secular protest mitingler of April-May had done absolutely nothing to boost secular Political Party hopes. Deniz Baykal's CHP, for example, slumped from the 19.39% it had polled in the 2002 election to just 13.6% in the 2007 Tempo Magazine Pre-Election Poll. Even worse, according to the Tempo poll...none of the other secular Turkish political parties could even pass the mandatory 10% vote-count-barrier on election day -- which loomed just 3 months onward. If that weren't enough to throw the fear of defeat into the hearts of secularists, they didn't have long to wait. First, the much-ballyhooed ANAP and DYP party-consolidation of the center-right broke down the same week it was formed. Then, the highly-touted consolidation of the center-left resulted in a weak-tea affair -- led by (the always ineffectual) Deniz Baykal, that could only attract Zeki Sezer's low-constituency DSP to its fold. Reality sets in... For Turkish secularists, things got even worse after that -- as momentum from their protest mitingler meandered to a near full-stop. And in the final pre-election days, the staunchly secular Sözcü Gazetesi admitted reluctantly that two other respected polling agencies (Konda and Sonar) were also predicting a big AKP victory -- with Konda forecasting 42% and Sonar 48% of the vote for the religious-right AKP. Adding further insult to injury, the religious-right AKP Party leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, became so supremely-confident of an historic AKP victory (a week before election-day)... that he issued an 'astonishing' challenge to his main secular party-leader opponents. "If," he proclaimed, "AKP doesn't win another clear-cut one-party-rule-majority in the Turkish Parliament, I'll quit politics. Will my opponents make the same offer, if their parties fail to do that?" The silence from secular Political-Party camps was deafening... One of our summer-season neighbors told us this story -- of what he saw the night before the election, as he journeyed the 45 minutes back from his Izmirli first-home to his yazlık here in Gümüldür. It confirmed predictions of an AKP 'landslide' in simple terms that we can all understand... His return route, our neighbor explained, passed by the campaign headquarters of the three major parties on his way back that night -- at about 10 PM. And, as he passed the CHP and MHP party headquarters he saw that their building lights were extinguished -- both were closed down for the night. But when he reached the AKP headquarters, its building lights were ablaze, there was last-minute vote-gathering activity seen through every window, and there was even a crowd of enthusiasts milling around outside... As we've heard said before, "In a war for men's minds, it's the most dedicated who will win." Next: What the Turkish National Election Results of 2007 may fortell Back: Bang, bang! AKP shot down for strong-arm tactics Related: Final Results Charts for the 2007 National Elections The Next Turkish President Must Not Be.... When Worlds Collide -- Kemalist Democracy and the AKP 2/2 Threats to Turkey's Well-Being - Terrorism and Religious Excess Murder in The Court Turkish 'Religious Attitudes' and Politics Turkish Political Parties -- Right, Left, Center? Caught Between 2 Bad Choices -- The Turkish Presidential Selection, 2007 Countdown To A Turkish Secularist's Nightmare, Presidential Selection Day 2007 Turkish National Election Polls 2002 Turkish National Election Results 2002 No 'Girl Power' -- Local elections 2004 (see yerel seçimler) International Study with an Outhouse Smell 'Troubles in Turkish Paradise' Language-Guide LPT's Geopolitical pages... Unrelated fun: Traditional Turkish Humor 1 We say softball, you say rounders... Turkish Terms Of Endearment Turkish Personal Names Politically Incorrect Turkish Humor Why Off-Color Turkish is important too Gossipy Turkish Who's Who The World's Worst Sport The 'cold and delicious' ice cream of Kahramanmaraş Post your comment...»

© [LPT] - Pre-Election Polls in Turkey, in 2007 -- The Unraveling of the Turkish Secular Movement