Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, aka President Obama’s BFF, has been working earnestly trying to recreate the Ottoman Empire with himself as the proclaimed head of the Islamist Empire.

erdogan the ottoman
Toward that end Erdogan built himself a grand and opulent palace, aligned himself with ISIS radicals, and provided a safe-harbor for exiled Muslim Brotherhood leadership after Qatar kicked them out for advocating extremist violence.  Yes, even Qatar, home of the GITMO 5, realized the Brotherhood leadership were essentially ISIS sycophants.  However, Erdogan viewed them as ideological brethren deserving of more than a little sympathy.
Erdogan is ‘all-in’ toward his goals of recreating a modern Ottoman Empire.  Nothing was going to stand in his way; even if it meant killing journalists who were exposing his extremist plans.  Erdogan even jails people who make fun of him, and shut down Twitter just because it posed a threat to his power. However, today he suffered a significant, well, actually a devastating, setback. 
erdogan turkey-presidential-palace
(Via Right Scoop)  For the first time in 13 years, the Turkish AKP, led by President Erdogan and Prime Minister Davutoglu, has lost its majority hold on the parliament. Just four years ago, the AKP won 326 seats in the parliament, well over the 276 needed for a majority. All they needed was four more seats and they could hold a public referendum on rewriting the constitution to make Erdogan a sultan-like figure to rule over Turkey.
But this election proved disastrous for Erdogan as the AKP lost around 68 seats, enough to remove their majority for the first time since 2002.
The election results are below. As you can see the AKP won only 258 seats, 18 seats below what they needed to maintain their simple majority. The new HDP Kurdish party managed to get almost 13%, which is a big deal because they needed a minimum of 10% to get into the parliament.
turkishelections_final
[…] The interesting thing about all this is how much Erdogan had riding on this election. He’s been strongly promoting the ‘New Turkey’ he is creating as well as his need for a new ‘presidential system’, almost daily. Indeed, he’s been heavily criticized for holding so many rallies for the AKP, as the president of Turkey is supposed to be a non-partisan figure.
Erdogan had really put himself out there and for his party to lose so many seats, it makes me wonder how he will respond to this.  (read more)
Obama Erdogan - Turkey

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