Commentary
Turkey has begun to take on a new geostrategic significance for the major global powers, even as its economy enters a period of growing fragility and its polity becomes increasingly divided.
The May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey, regardless of the outcome, were unlikely to stop severe pain coming to the Turkish population. Diminished national strategic capacity—due to years of economic mismanagement and political alienation of neighbors and allies, as well as the February earthquake—have meant that any new government would face decades of challenges.
In the early morning of May 15, Turkey’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) said that the election for the presidency would be forced to a runoff on May 28, although the parliamentary election had given a majority to the outgoing Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party: AK Party)….