It may be that Erdogan simply overreached in the last few years. While he’s Turkey’s most popular and powerful leader in decades, his eagerness to expand his reach alienated voters, particularly urban and secular ones. He embarked on a $615 million white-elephant palace project, imprisoned and intimidated the press and his political opponents, tried to block YouTube and Twitter, and feuded with Fethullah Gulen, a religious leader who’d help bring him to power. Anger boiled over in the streets of Istanbul and elsewhere in 2013, sparked by protests over trying to turn a park in the city into a mall. Meanwhile, the economy sputtered. 
 
 Rounding out the rest of the vote on Sunday, the secular-nationalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) won 25 percent; the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) took 17 percent; and the HDP ended up at 12.5 percent. To change the constitution, the AKP would need 367 seats; a majority would have been 276. Instead, it’s projected to take 258. 
 
 An AKP official told Reuters, “We expect a minority government and an early election." The party could seek a coalition government instead, but its prospects aren’t great. The CHP, its main rival, and HDP have both ruled out coalitions—not that they were likely in the first place. The MHP seems like a more natural partner, but the AKP isn’t interested, the same official said glumly: "If there is an AKP-MHP coalition, then we will not be able to achieve even this level of votes at the next election.” 
 
 The party tried to play up fear of a return to the bad old days of coalition governments, instability, and coups as a way to earn support. The stability of the last decade has been one of Erdogan’s great selling points. But his wily political maneuvering means it’s tough to count him out yet. 
 
 Despite fears, the day of the election seemed generally calm. That hadn’t been true of the campaign. On Friday, an explosion at an HDP rally killed two and injured more than 100. The rally was in Diyarbakir, a southeastern, mostly Kurdish city. Authorities haven’t placed blame for the attack. 
 
 It’s almost hard to recall that only a few years ago, Erdogan, a moderate Islamist, was viewed by both Western allies and reformers in Arab countries as a model for Muslim democracy. As a NATO ally in the Middle East, he’s been an important part of various security questions. But as he seeks more power, Erdogan has feuded with Western countries, who no longer see him as the reliable and trustworthy ally they once did. He’s steadfastly refused to get involved in the Syrian civil war, though fighters have streamed across the Turkish border into that conflict, and fighting erupted just over the border in Kobani. Disapproval of his handling of that conflict help build support for the HDP. How large an effect the election has on Turkey’s role as a regional power remains to be seen. ||||| Men line up to vote in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. The acrimonious buildup to the parliamentary vote had raised fears of violence. 
 
 June 7, 2015 Men line up to vote in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. The acrimonious buildup to the parliamentary vote had raised fears of violence. Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Turkish voters delivered a dramatic blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice Development Party on Sunday, with results showing it losing its majority in parliament. 
 
 And, in a historic first, a party dominated by ethnic Kurds surged into the Grand National Assembly in Ankara, marking a new moment in the evolution of Turkey’s democracy as well as a direct challenge to Erdogan’s own ambitions to consolidate power as president. 
 
 “This is a nuclear explosion in Turkish politics,” said Bulent Aliriza, an expert in Turkey at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 
 
 As uncertainty shrouded the make-up of a future government, Turkey’s main stock index fell by 8 percent and its currency, the lira, dropped to a record low against the dollar. 
 
 Erdogan had been seeking a supermajority to force through constitutional change, but according to the state Anadolu news agency, his center-right party, known by the Turkish abbreviation AKP, secured less than 41 percent of the vote with 99 percent of ballots counted. Although it is still the biggest party in the country, the AKP suffered its worst result since 2002. It was projected to lose its majority in parliament, an astonishing turn of events for a party that has dominated Turkish politics for almost a decade and a half. 
 
 Turkish Kurds take to the streets as their party wins enough votes to enter parliament for the first time, dealing a serious blow to the country’s ruling party. (Reuters) 
 
 The AKP was expected to fall far short of the 330 seats needed to force a national referendum on Erdogan’s plan to scrap Turkey’s parliamentary structure for a presidential system, with him at the top. 
 
 [Erdogan find ally in old Cold War nemesis] 
 
 “The nation’s decision is the best decision. Do not worry,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a cagey post-election speech. He was the face of the AKP’s election campaign, if not necessarily the figure pulling its strings. 
 
 The deciding factor in this election was the emergence of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, which came in fourth with 12 percent of the vote. For a political party to enter Turkey’s parliament, it has to pass a threshold of 10 percent of the total vote. The HDP did so and will command an estimated 78 seats in the 550-seat legislature, mostly won at the expense of the AKP. 
 
 It was a remarkable achievement for a party that was formed less than three years ago and has direct ties to the violent three-decade Kurdish separatist insurgency in Turkey’s southeast. The war between the militant Kurd­istan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and the Turkish state has claimed 40,000 lives since it first flared in the early 1980s. 
 
 “From now on, HDP is Turkey’s party. HDP is Turkey, Turkey is HDP,” the party’s leader, Selahattin Demirtas, said Sunday evening at a news conference in Istanbul. 
 
 The party framed itself as a leftist movement for all Turks and boasted a diverse slate of parliamentary candidates, including representatives of virtually all of Turkey’s major ethnic groups, a large number of women and the nation’s first openly gay candidate. 
 
 A supporter of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party holds a flag in Diyarbakir, Turkey, after elections on June 7. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 [Muslims beat Columbus to America and other Erdogan musings] 
 
 The HDP’s progressive agenda appealed to disgruntled urban voters who disliked the AKP and struggled to identify with the other main opposition parties — the secularist Republican People’s Party, or CHP, a staunchly republican party that walks in the shadow of Turkey’s founding father, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, and the Nationalist Action Party, or MHP, which is “a stone’s throw away from fascist,” said Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at London’s RUSI think tank. 
 
 “The HDP represents the diversity of the minorities in Turkey and a real pluralist democracy,” said Laura Batalla, secretary general of Friends of Turkey, a unit attached to the European Parliament. 
 
 The HDP’s success, given the party’s origins, speaks to the maturing of Turkish democracy. Among the HDP’s parliamentarians are relatives of jailed or slain leaders of the PKK, an organization still considered a terrorist group by Washington and An­kara. Demirtas, the HDP’s charismatic icon, is believed to have a brother among the guerrillas. 
 
 For decades, Kurdish identity was suppressed by the Turkish state. Ironically, it was under Erdogan and the AKP that Kurds began to experience more cultural rights, including the freedom to speak and write in their own language. 
 
 It’s now “impossible to sideline Kurdish politics,” says Akin Unver, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. “Despite the civil war of the 1990s, Kurds have evolved politically and established a lasting legacy” on the Turkish national stage. 
 
 It is unclear what may follow. The three main opposition parties have so far ruled out entering into a coalition with the AKP, which may choose to attempt a minority government or enter a scenario where early elections are called. 
 
 Erdogan issued a careful statement on Monday, saying the “current situation” would be “evaluated healthily and realistically by all parties that have taken part in the race.” 
 
 Analysts believe Erdogan’s desire to assume further powers and eliminate checks and balances through an executive presidency badly backfired. 
 
 “Erdogan may have made the mistake of his political life by going for the presidency,” said Aliriza, instead of remaining as prime minister, a post he held from 2003 until last year. “If he had not decided to go for the presidency, we would now be discussing his record fourth electoral victory as prime minister.” 
 
 Under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey has transformed dramatically. 
 
 Reforms have lifted a new middle class and empowered a whole stratum of society outside the secular elites entrenched in the country’s western coastal cities. 
 
 In the Istanbul neighborhood of Kasimpasa, a traditionally lower-middle-class area and AKP stronghold where Erdogan was born, voters praised his years of rule. 
 
 “Thanks to Erdogan, so much has changed. There is prosperity and stability,” said Hafiza Aktas, who cast her ballot at a polling station in the primary school where Erdogan was a student. 
 
 Aktas said the AKP’s sweeping reforms of Turkey’s health system have been life-saving for her family. And, pointing to her red-and-black headscarf, she said the party has lifted decades of secularist suppression of the country’s devout Muslims. 
 
 “I can go everywhere now. I have real freedom,” said Aktas, referring to earlier bans on the wearing of headscarves at public institutions. 
 
 But the AKP has been hobbled by corruption scandals and anger about its increasing control over state institutions, as well as fatigue with Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian style. The party lost considerable votes in central and eastern Anatolia, usually a reliable base of support. Erdogan’s party no longer has a lock on the vision for Turkey’s future. 
 
 On Sunday morning, Demirtas cast his ballot at a school in Sultanbeyli, a working-class neighborhood in Istanbul with a large Kurdish population. 
 
 His arrival at the venue was like a rock star’s. The car carrying Demirtas was mobbed by supporters who chanted, clapped and cried in joy. Youths, some decked out in shirts and flags hailing Kurdistan, clambered onto fences and walls to catch a glimpse of their hero. 
 
 “Our leader is the greatest leader,” they chanted. 
 
 On the sidelines was Melek Karmaz, a Turkish woman who is married to a Kurd and held their child in her arms. 
 
 “There’s no difference between us. We all shed the same tears,” she said, referring to the suffering experienced during the years of the civil war. 
 
 “I am so proud to cast this vote as a Turk.” 
 
 Vildan Ay contributed to this report from Istanbul. 
 
 Read more 
 
 Is Turkey reaching a turning point? 
 
 Turkey’s Kurds find themselves on threshold of unprecedented power 
 
 For Turkey and U.S., at odds over Syria, a 60-year alliance shows signs of crumbling ||||| President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey has said the country is entering an uncertain period of coalition government after his 13-year-old reign of solid majorities for the Justice and Development party (AKP) was ended by a stunning voter backlash against his increasingly authoritarian rule. 
 
 Election result heralds a new Turkey, but not the one Erdoğan wanted Read more 
 
 “Our nation’s opinion is above everything else,” Erdoğan said in his first public reaction to the parliamentary elections on Sunday that represented a watershed by shaving nearly 10 points from the governing party and putting a liberal pro-Kurdish party in parliament in Ankara for the first time. 
 
 Erdoğan’s conciliatory tone contrasted sharply with the highly polarising language he used during the campaign. 
 
 He said no party had won a mandate to govern alone and urged all political parties to work towards preserving an environment of confidence and stability in the country. 
 
 Coalition talks will dominate the coming weeks in Turkey after voters snubbed the president’s plans to change the constitution and extend his grip on power, delivering the biggest blow to the AKP since it swept to power in 2002. 
 
 The election result wrecked Erdoğan’s ambition of rewriting the constitution to establish himself as an all-powerful executive president, while the country’s large Kurdish minority has been granted its biggest voice ever in national politics. 
 
 “I believe the results, which do not give the opportunity to any party to form a single-party government, will be assessed healthily and realistically by every party.” 
 
 Turkey election results: what you need to know Read more 
 
 The election breakthrough for the leftist HDP, a new party largely representing the Kurds but also encompassing liberals nationally, was greeted with wild celebrations in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey. Cars paraded through the city with drivers honking and people hanging out from windows making ‘V’ signs as occasional gunshots were fired into the air. 
 
 
 
 The results will give the Kurds – who, with 20% of Turkey’s population, are the country’s biggest minority – true representation in parliament. The HDP surpassed the steep 10% threshold for entering parliament to take more than 12% of the vote and around 80 seats in the 550-strong chamber. The party’s result also denied Erdoğan’s AKP its majority. 
 
 The 10% hurdle, dating from the military-authored constitution of 1980, had been intended in part to diminish Kurdish representation in the parliament. 
 
 Sunday’s vote was the first time in four general elections to see a fall in support for Erdoğan. While the AKP comfortably managed to secure the biggest portion of the vote, its 41% share of seats represents a sharp drop from its performance the 2011 elections, when it won nearly half the national vote. For the first time since 2002, the AKP will need to form a coalition government or call new elections. 
 
 The government’s deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus, told reporters he was confident that his party would form a coalition with one of the other three parties, calling the idea of a new election a “distant possibility.” 
 
 It remains unclear, however, who will be a likely partner for the AKP after the most likely candidate, the rightwing Nationalist Movement party (MHP) ruled out the possibility of a coalition. 
 
 According to the state-run Anadolu agency, the party leader, Devlet Bahceli, said the party was “ready to be a main opposition party” against an AKP-led coalition or minority government during a speech from party headquarters in Ankara early on Monday. 
 
 “Nobody has a right to drag Turkey into [AKP] minority and some circles’ scenarios,” said Bahceli. “A snap election will happen whenever it will happen.” He welcomed the election results, with his party gaining 31 seats in parliament. 
 
 Erdoğan to struggle on despite thumbs down from Turkey's electorate Read more 
 
 Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the leftist HDP, and surprise star of this election, also dismissed any possibility of a coalition with the AKP. 
 
 “We will not form a coalition with the AKP. We stand behind our words. We will be in parliament as a strong opposition,” Demirtas said in a press conference in Istanbul on Sunday night. He added that the election results had clearly put an end to all plans of an executive presidency. 
 
 “As of this moment, the debate on the presidency, the debate about dictatorship, has come to an end in Turkey. Turkey has returned from the edge of a cliff,” he said. 
 
 Pro-government newspapers on Monday morning were already calling for early elections. “The ballot box revealed the ballot box”, read the headline of the conservateive daily Yeni Safak. 
 
 Burhan Kuzu, the AK party deputy and head of the parliamentary constitution commission, said snap elections were inevitable. “No government will emerge from this scenario. Not even a coalition,” he told BBC Türkçe. “Early elections look inevitable.” He added that the election results reflected the weakness of the parliamentary system. 
 
 “The parliamentary system is a curse for the whole world. In Turkey only majority governments ever worked, coalitions always destroyed it.” He said that the only solution would be an executive presidency. 
 
 New elections could be called any time in the next 45 days. 
 
 Official results based on 99.9% of votes counted put the AKP in the lead, followed by the Republican People’s party (CHP) on 25%, the MHP on 16.5% and the HDP in fourth place with 13%. Turnout was 86%. According to official projections, the AKP will have 258 seats in the 550-seat parliament, CHP 132, MHP 81 and HDP 79. 
 
 Turkey election 2015: Kurdish Obama is the country's bright new star Read more 
 
 The AKP has dominated Turkish politics since it first came to power in 2002, but has suffered from a dip in economic growth and controversy over Erdoğan’s perceived authoritarian tendencies. 
 
 The results wreck Erdoğan’s dream of agreeing a new constitution to switch Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system that he had made a fundamental issue in the campaign. Such a change would have required a two-thirds majority in the parliament. 
 
 Speaking from the balcony of AKP headquarters in Ankara – the traditional venue for the party’s victory speeches – the prime minister and party leader, Ahmet Davutoglu, sought to put a brave face on the results. “The winner of the election is again the AKP, there’s no doubt,” he said, pledging to ensure Turkey’s stability. But he added: “Our people’s decision is final. It’s above everything and we will act in line with it.” 
 
 But the atmosphere outside the AKP’s headquarters was muted. Several hundred supporters chanted for Erdoğan, the party’s founder, but there was little sign of the huge crowds that gathered after past election victories. 
 
 
 
 Erdogan’s divide-and-rule strategy of rallying his religious-conservative base has led to increasing polarisation in Turkey, and in some cases to violence. Erdoğan had repeatedly lashed out at the HDP and its charismatic leader Demirtaş before the elections. 
 
 The HDP ran on a platform defending the rights of ethnic minorities, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people - forming an electoral coalition between the Kurdish minority in Turkey’s south-east and liberals in Istanbul and elsewhere. 
 
 
 
 “This result shows that this country has had enough. Enough of Erdoğan and his anger,” said Seyran Demir, a 47-year-old who was among the thousands who gathered in the streets around the HDP’s provincial headquarters in Diyarbakir. “I am so full of joy that I can’t speak properly.” 
 
 “It is a carnival night,” said 47-year-old Huseyin Durmaz, a Kurd. “We no longer trust the AKP,” he said. 
 
 Another record was set by the number of women MPs set to take a seat in parliament after an unofficial tally estimated a total of 96 female parliamentarians securing a place in the Turkish grand national assembly – a record high and up from 79 in 2011. ||||| Almost immediately, the results raised questions about the political future of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who moved to that position from that of foreign minister last year and was seen as a loyal subordinate of Mr. Erdogan. 
 
 Speaking Sunday night from a balcony at the party headquarters in Ankara, Mr. Davutoglu struck notes of triumph and optimism, touting his party as the winner because it won the most seats, without mentioning the loss of its majority. 
 
 “The elections once again showed that the A.K. Party is the backbone of Turkey,” he said. 
 
 Mr. Erdogan, who as president was not on the ballot Sunday, will probably remain Turkey’s dominant political figure even if his ambitions have been curtailed, given his outsize personality and his still-deep well of support among Turkey’s religious conservatives, who form the backbone of his constituency. But even among those supporters, including ones in Kasimpasa, the Istanbul neighborhood where Mr. Erdogan spent part of his youth, there are signs that his popularity is flagging. 
 
 “A lot of people in Kasimpasa have become disheartened by Erdogan’s aggressive approach in recent weeks,” said Aydin, 77, who gave only his first name because some of his family members are close to Mr. Erdogan. “I voted for the A.K.P. because it has become habit, but I think Erdogan lost votes this week.” 
 
 Turnout was 86 percent for the elections, which were seen as a referendum on Mr. Erdogan’s tenure, especially his plan for a presidential system that would have given him more power. Polling had consistently shown that the majority of Turks are opposed to the change. 
 
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 By law, Mr. Erdogan can call for new elections after 45 days if a coalition is not formed, and the political uncertainty sent Turkey’s currency, the lira, to a record low against the dollar in after-hours trading. 
 
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 The vote turned on the historic performance at the ballot box of Turkey’s Kurdish minority, which aligned with liberals and secular Turks opposed to Mr. Erdogan’s leadership to win almost 13 percent of the vote, passing the legal threshold for earning representation in Parliament. 
 
 Selahattin Demirtas, 42, a former human rights lawyer who leads the largely Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, told reporters Sunday night: “As of this hour, the debate about the presidency, the debate about dictatorship, is over. Turkey narrowly averted a disaster.” 
 
 The People’s Democratic Party, known as H.D.P., was able to broaden its base by fielding a slate of candidates that included women, gays and other minorities and appealed to voters whose goal was to curtail Mr. Erdogan’s powers. 
 
 “I voted for H.D.P. because it’s the only party that can break up Erdogan’s bid for absolute power,” said Selen Olcay, 47, a fitness instructor who voted in Istanbul’s Sariyer District. “In this election a lot of Turks abandoned their ideological preferences and voted strategically to derail Erdogan’s one-man rule.” 
 
 The Kurdish party opted to run a unified slate, rather than field independent candidates as it had in the past. But it was a big risk: either it would reach the 10 percent threshold and enter Parliament, or it would be shut out, and its seats would have gone to the A.K.P. 
 
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 In the city of Diyarbakir, in the Kurdish heartland in the southeast, celebrations broke out as people flooded the streets, dancing and setting off fireworks. 
 
 In Istanbul, Kurds saw the election as the culmination of decades of struggle, some of it waged violently by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has fought an insurgency from a base in northern Iraq for more political rights. In recent years Mr. Erdogan’s government had entered peace talks with the Kurds and violence ebbed, and Sunday’s vote raised hopes for a final deal. 
 
 “This is the victory of peace against war,” said Sirri Sureyya Onder, an H.D.P. official, speaking to a group of reporters after preliminary results were published. 
 
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 The Republican People’s Party, the main secular opposition party, came in second with 25 percent of the vote, but it was the Kurds whose surge positioned them as kingmakers in the next Parliament. It also highlighted the evolution of the Kurdish movement, from the battlefields of the southeast, where a bloody insurgency raged for nearly 30 years, to the halls of power in Ankara, the capital. 
 
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 Even as days of political bargaining lie ahead, the elections capped a two-year period of seismic shifts in Turkish politics. Widespread antigovernment protests in 2013, set off by plans to raze an Istanbul park and replace it with a mall, laid bare the growing resentments among liberal and secular Turks toward the governing party. Then, a corruption scandal threatened to engulf Mr. Erdogan and his government. Mr. Erdogan survived by targeting the followers of his erstwhile ally, the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who over the years had taken positions in the judiciary and the police and were accused of orchestrating a graft inquiry. 
 
 Turkey has felt strains in other arenas. It has taken in nearly two million Syrians, who have been a burden on services and exacerbated tensions in border regions, especially as the economy has slowed. In the wake of the Arab Spring, Turkey pursued an Islamist agenda in the region, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whose president was deposed by the military. Its policy in Syria of pushing for the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad has been unpopular in Turkey, and Mr. Assad, four years later, is still in power. 
 
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 The diminished power of Mr. Erdogan’s party is likely to rein in Turkey’s ambitions to shape events in the Middle East, an activist foreign policy that has been controversial among political opponents and the public. 
 
 “Turkey’s foreign policy will be less driven by the A.K.P.’s ambitions, which is basically driven by a foreign policy vision to make Turkey a regional player at any cost,” Mr. Cagaptay said, suggesting it had supported various Syrian factions opposing the Assad government and sometimes turned a blind eye to fighters crossing into Syria to join the Islamic State. 
 
 He added: “The outcome of the election will take Turkey’s anti-Assad policy down a notch. The government will not be able to drive its agenda single-handedly anymore.” 
 
 Turkey, a member of NATO, has seen its relations with its Western allies deteriorate, mainly over Syria and the fight against the Islamic State, the militant group that controls vast areas of Iraq and Syria. An American-led coalition has been carrying out an air campaign against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, for nearly a year, but Western officials complain that Turkey has not done enough, such as allowing its air bases to be used for bombing runs. Critics also partly blame Turkey for the rise of the Islamic State for its early support of Islamist groups in Syria. 
 
 The election was defined by bitter partisanship, with opponents criticizing Mr. Erdogan for his accumulation of powers, his bashing of the news media and his lavish new official residence, which Mr. Erdogan justified by saying his previous residence was infested with cockroaches. The campaign was also marred by violence, including a bombing last week at a Kurdish political rally that left two people dead. 
 
 “Erdogan’s salvos over the past week show how nervous he is about the outcome of this election,” said Ugur Kaplan, 24, a student who voted in Istanbul. 
 
 “The A.K.P. has lost votes, and it’s because of him. People are tired of having their lives dictated by one nutty man. It’s time for change.”
– "This is a nuclear explosion" is how an expert on Turkey puts it to the Washington Post. The country's ruling party today finds itself with few options to form a new government after it was stripped of its parliamentary majority and opposition parties ruled out joining it in a coalition pact. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party won about 41% of the votes yesterday and was projected to take 258 seats—18 below the minimum required to rule alone and ending its 13-year single-party rule. As the New York Times reports, after more than a decade as PM, Erdogan was last year elected to the somewhat "ceremonial post" of president, and the result was a stunning rebuke to Erdogan's ambitions to expand his powers; his hopes of passing constitutional changes that would fashion more of an executive presidency, more akin to our own version, are on hold, reports the Atlantic. Turkey has 45 days in which to form a new government after final official results are confirmed, but all three opposition parties have come out against a coalition with the AKP. Turkey's main opposition party, CHP, suggested it should be given the task of forming a government. The liberal pro-Kurdish HDP party dealt the AKP its biggest setback by clearing for the first time the 10% threshold it needed to grab seats in parliament (it'll take about 80 of the chamber's 550). The Guardian frames the significance: "The results will give the Kurds—who, with 20% of Turkey's population, are the country's biggest minority—true representation in parliament. ... The 10% hurdle, dating from the military-authored constitution of 1980, had been intended in part to diminish Kurdish representation in the parliament."