Turkey elections: Country remains deeply

Turkey elections: Country remains deeply

divided and mired in conflict ahead of voting All eyes will be on Turkey, a key Nato ally and partner in the fight against Isil, on Sunday as the country votesFile photo: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses a reception at the presidential palace in Ankara, Turkey  Turkey held a deeply divisive election on Sunday amid renewed conflict in the south-east and an ever-increasing threat from Islamist extremism. Many fear that Turkey is sliding into authoritarianism under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president. If the Justice and Development Party (AKP), co-founded and formerly led by the president for 12 years, does not win enough seats to form a government, there are fears he will become still more autocratic. As a key Nato member and ally in the fight against Isil, Turkey's election will be closely watched abroad. Europe also desperately needs Turkish cooperation to stem the refugee crisis as increasing numbers flow across the country's border with Syria. On Sunday, polls opened at 4am GMT and ended at 2pm GMT in the west while in the east it began and ended an hour earlier. This is already Turkey’s second election of the year: no party won an overall majority in the last contest on June 7. Since then, the country has been hit by a twin bombing in Ankara, widely believed to have been perpetrated by an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) cell, which killed more than 100 people. And a two-year ceasefire between the Turkish state and the insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has broken down, restarting a decades-long civil war. For three days earlier this month, police and youth militia had fought each other on the streets of central Diyarbakir, the south-eastern Turkish city Kurds call their capital, forcing residents to hide in their homes under a government-imposed curfew. When the guns fell silent, 12-year-old Helin Sen decided to buy bread. She cheerfully told her family that she would prepare breakfast for them after returning from the bakery. But as soon as she stepped outside, she was shot in the head and killed — by police, her neighbours say. “Helin is not a terrorist. She’s not a guerrilla. She was 12 years old, going to second class of secondary school,” said her father Ekrem Sen, a taxi driver. In the two weeks since his daughter died, he says he has lost nine pounds. “If it had been my father, my brother, even my wife, it would not pain me so much as losing my firstborn.” Months of intensifying clashes have eclipsed the celebrations that erupted across south-eastern Turkey after the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) became the first pro-Kurdish party to enter parliament in June, ending the decade-long majority rule of AKP.