TURKEY:Turkey's hugely popular prime minister extended a conciliatory hand to the 53 per cent of Turks who had voted against him this weekend, as Turkey seeks to move beyond elections riven by tensions over secularism and Kurdish separatist violence.
"Rest assured, there will be no concessions on the fundamental characteristics of the republic," Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech given after it had become clear that his Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) had won 340 seats in 550-seat parliament on Sunday evening.
"We vow to embrace all Turks, without discrimination." The second biggest landslide in Turkey's history, the scale of AKP's victory appeared to take even the party leaders by surprise. Outside AKP's Istanbul headquarters at midnight on Sunday, supporters were as stunned as they were euphoric.
Cars passed in a blare of horns. AKP supporters draped in the blue, white and orange party colours bopped to a sound track built around the slogan for the campaign: "Don't stop now, on we go!"
"It's a victory for the people, a massive victory", said Emine Diktas, a student.
Analysts tended to agree with her. "Hope defeated fear," said political analyst Ahmet Insel. "Civilian democracy defeated militarism." He was referring to the secularist and nationalist opposition's preference for a campaign short on policies and long on fear-mongering.
First brought to power in 2002, AKP has long been held in suspicion by secularists convinced that its democratic reforms are a tool for weakening the secular army and bringing in Islamic law.
But fears about secularism overflowed this April when AKP tried to elect a president married to a woman who wears a headscarf. Millions marched in protest and the army threatened to intervene.
An analyst at New York-based policy centre Eurasia Group, Wolfango Piccoli was as dismissive as most ordinary Turks are of secularist talk of a hidden AKP agenda. "Turks pragmatically voted for AKP due to the party's positive record in providing political stability, handling the economy and promoting Turkey's bid for membership in the European Union," he said. After waiting 40 years, Turkey was given a date to begin accession proceedings in 2004.
International financial circles were no less enthusiastic. Some 70 per cent foreign-owned, Istanbul's stock market advanced 5.3 per cent today, and the lira rose 2.3 per cent against the dollar.
Yet, while there is no doubt that AKP can now rightfully call itself a centre-right party, rather than one representing only the Islamist fringe of Turkey's political spectrum, there is still trouble ahead for Turkey.
It is less likely now to take the form of a military invasion of northern Iraq. Turkey's army has been calling for months for parliamentary permission to go in pursuit of Kurdish separatists based there. "An invasion would be a sign of government weakness, and the government has confirmed its ascendancy," says security expert Ihsan Bal.
The real question is how AKP interprets its victory. With nearly two-thirds of seats in the parliament that was dissolved by the president yesterday, it has occasionally displayed signs of a disease common to popular Turkish right-wing parties - using its mandate to ride roughshod over minority opposition.
With the new parliament shared between AKP, secularists and Turkish and Kurdish nationalists, AKP has not won the 367 seats it needed to vote through its presidential candidate.
Yet Tayyip Erdogan was noncommittal today when asked whether foreign minister Abdullah Gul would be running for the presidency again. Should he do so, analysts say, secularist tensions could rise again.
"AKP has a golden opportunity," says Faruk Logoglu, who retired last year as Turkey's ambassador to Washington. "One misstep, though, and we could be back at square one."
Among opposition parties leaders widely criticised for incompetent opposition, resignations have already started.