Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, accompanied by his wife Emine Erdogan, greets his supporters at the Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters in Ankara on June 12, 2011. Turkey’s ruling Islamist-rooted party clinched a record landslide in today’s parliamentary polls but was short of the two-thirds majority it needs to amend the constitution, near-complete results showed. With 99 percent of the votes counted, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party was leading with 50 percent of the vote for a third straight win, according to results on television channels.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan poses for Reuters at his office at the AK Party headquarters in Ankara June 13, 2011. Erdogan’s AK Party has scored a resounding third consecutive election victory, but he will need to seek consensus to push ahead with a planned new constitution. Erdogan, whose AK has transformed Muslim Turkey into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and ended a cycle of military coups, won some 50 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election.