In a repudiation of the ruling party of Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, voters a week ago Sunday flocked to the polls to deny the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) a majority of seats in the country's parliament, the Grand National Assembly. Erdoğan had hoped the AKP would win a super-majority (330 of the chamber's 550 seats) in order to change Turkey's constitution and give significantly more power to the largely ceremonial presidency. Erdoğan, who has lurched increasingly toward authoritarianism, had intended to build a powerful Turkish presidential system more akin to Russia's.
However, his party received only 258 seats, 18 seats shorts of even a simple majority, throwing Turkish politics into real upheaval for first time since the AKP came to power in 2002. The center-left Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, or CHP) won 132 seats. The far-right Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, or MHP) won 80 seats, and, on the left, the newly minted Peoples' Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, or HDP) also won 80 seats. Follow below the fold to find out how the AKP lost its majority and where Turkish politics might be headed next.