FOR Turkey’s combative president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has won every election he has faced since becoming Istanbul’s first Islamist mayor in 1994, it was a bitter defeat. Voters denied his Justice and Development (AK) party a majority in the June 7th general election, thwarting his dreams of rewriting the constitution to grant himself executive powers. AK, led by Ahmet Davutoglu, the prime minister, took 40.9% of the vote and 258 seats, 18 too few for a single-party government. That is a big drop from the 50% AK won in 2011. The turnout was high, at 86%.
Now, for the first time since AK swept to power in 2002, coalition rule seems all but inevitable. “The dictator’s back has been broken,” crowed Faruk Arslan, a Turkish blogger, reflecting the celebratory mood of the president’s swelling army of critics. Yet though Mr Erdogan’s march towards one-man rule has been checked, it is premature to write him off. “This is a multi-act drama and we have just rung down the curtain on the first act,” cautions Eric Edelman, a former American ambassador to Turkey.
The prospect of a return to feeble multiparty rule sent jitters…