GCC divided over ‘authoritarian’ Erdogan

Influential public figures and media outlets in the Gulf appeared sharply divided over Turkey’s election result, in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) secured 317 of the 550 parliamentary seats available. This was sufficient to form a majority government – seeing off the challenge of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a leftist grouping that polls most strongly in Turkey’s Kurdish south-east (GSN 998/19) – but not to change the constitution. The AKP had failed to win a majority (for the first time since 2002) in elections on 7 June, which produced a hung parliament, and attempts to form a coalition government failed.