 and its ally, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), would have received a nationwide vote of 36.6 percent if a general election were to be held in June, according to a survey conducted by the Ankara-based MetroPoll.){kind=link}
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Public Alliance, which includes his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), would have received a nationwide vote of 36.6 percent if a general election were to be held in June, according to a survey conducted by the Ankara-based MetroPoll.
The results of the survey, titled “Turkey’s Pulse – July 2021” and conducted between June 19 and 23 on 1,740 people in 28 provinces, were shared on Twitter by Özer Sencar, the owner and president of MetroPoll, on Thursday.
When asked “Which political party would you vote for if a general election were to be held this Sunday?” 29.3 percent of respondents said they would vote for the ruling AKP, while only 7.3 percent said they would support the MHP, which is below Turkey’s election threshold.
Turkey has a 10 percent election threshold, which means if a party fails to get 10 percent of the national vote in the general election, they lose the opportunity to be represented in parliament.
While the AKP-MHP vote would have stood at 36.6 percent in total in a June election, the parties comprising the rival Nation Alliance — the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the nationalist İYİ (Good) Party and the Islamist Felicity Party (SP) — would have received 30.4 percent in total, with the CHP garnering 19 percent of the vote and the İYİ 10.2 percent.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) stood at 9.7 percent, while former AKP co-founder Ali Babacan’s Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) received 0.9 percent of the vote.
In the last general election, held in June 2018, the AKP garnered a nationwide vote of 42.6 percent. However, public surveys have increasingly been showing the party’s public support to be slipping.
Sencar noted in a tweet that the survey was conducted before nearly 300 wildfires broke out in the country in late July and deadly flash floods hit Turkey’s Black Sea region in August.
Erdoğan and his ruling AKP faced widespread criticism over the poor response and inadequate preparedness for the large-scale wildfires that started on the country’s southern and western coasts on July 28 and claimed the lives of nine people, also destroying large swathes of forestland, until they were fully contained on Aug. 13.