ANKARA: Turkey’s AK Party has gained support in the last two months and could recover the absolute majority it lost in June, if a snap parliamentary election were held immediately, Turkish pollster MAK found in its latest survey.
The poll is the second in a week to indicate that the AK Party founded by President Tayyip Erdogan would be able to form a single-party government, suggesting that rising violence between government forces and Kurdish militants was bolstering support for the AKP.
The AKP would secure 44.7 percent of the vote if a snap election were held immediately, MAK found, almost 4 percentage points more than the 40.9 percent it gained in June, its worst result for more than a decade.
Negotiations to form a government, which started about a month after the June 7 general election, have been overshadowed by Ankara’s offensive against Kurdish and Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, as well as rising violence between government forces and Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey.
Critics have said that, with the AKP having failed to assemble a majority coalition, Erdogan wants to use the crackdown on militants to bolster support from nationalists and pave the way for a snap election.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was due to hold a meeting with the main opposition CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu later on Monday. But lawmakers of both parties say forming a coalition will be difficult.
The MAK poll found that the vote for the secular CHP and the nationalist MHP would remain almost unchanged while the pro-Kurdish HDP would fall to 10.7 percent, from the more than 13 percent it secured in June’s election.
