Turkish former deputy PM Arınç: AK Party will win 276 seats in Nov 1 elections


Former Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç on Sunday in a local television interview in his hometown of Manisa said that he expects the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to gain 276 seats in the upcoming Nov. 1 elections, which would allow the party to form a single-party government.

Indicating that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu had shown him the latest poll during his travel to Bursa for a party meeting, Arınç said: "He showed me the last survey. In the last two days, we reached 276 seats in Parliament; however, that is not enough for us. God willing, there is an upward sloping in the graphics. It will further make an upturn in the last 10 days before the elections."

He said that pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) had passed the electoral threshold in June 7 general elections due to the Diyarbakır bombing and further commented, "Several voters might act with the same feelings in the Nov. 1 elections because of the terror attack in Ankara."

Only a couple hours after the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Turkish history, which claimed the lives of around 100 people and wounded more than 250, pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş was at the scene of the incident where he attempted to turn the calamity into a small HDP rally and vowed to take down President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the upcoming Nov. 1 elections.

The head of the Objective Research Center (ORC), Mehmet Murat Pösteki, told a news website on Thursday that the AK Party is expected to gain 275 seats in the upcoming Nov. 1 elections, which means only one seat is needed for a single-party government.

He said that in the previous June 7 elections, many AK Party voters did not go to the polls, which caused the party to fail to receive seats in several provinces with slightly less votes, and said: "The unyielding stance of the state in the counter-terror fight paves the way for the AK Party to regain votes that shifted to the Nationalist Movement Party [MHP] on June 7."

"The HDP's electoral threshold problem is completely out. It was relatively successful in getting political interest in the aftermath of the recent Ankara bombings. However, in the event of any PKK link, things will be exactly the opposite," he said, adding that he predicts the HDP will receive 75 seats in the Nov. 1 elections.

In the June 7 elections, the AK Party received the most votes at 40.87 percent with 258 seats. The CHP received the second-most at 24.95 percent and 132 seats. The MHP received 16.29 percent and 80 seats and the HDP received the same amount of seats with 13.12 percent.