Gamble Pays Off As Turkey's Pm Wins Historic Landslide

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, secured a landslide election triumph last night, winning a second five-year term with nearly half of the national vote after being forced by veiled threats of a military overthrow to call an early ballot.

In what was seen as the most crucial Turkish election in at least a generation, Mr Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 47% of the vote, giving it a majority of about 130 in the 550-seat parliament in Ankara.

The vote vindicated Mr Erdogan's gamble in calling the election four months early after the military, the opposition, and the constitutional court stymied his choice of president in April. As he said in a magnanimous victory speech last night in Ankara, it was the first time in more than 50 years a Turkish governing party had been returned with a bigger share of the vote. The AKP put on 13% compared with its 2002 breakthrough. The CHP, or Republican People's party, came second with 21%; the only other party to enter parliament, the rightwing nationalist MHP, took 14% .

Turks turned out in searing heat, deserting resorts on the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts to award Mr Erdogan his thumping majority. More than 80% of the electorate voted in what Mr Erdogan declared a big test for democracy - an implicit dig at the generals and their political allies, whose attempt to undermine the government ended in fiasco.

While Mr Erdogan's parliamentary majority is more than comfortable, his seat tally fell by 22 because more parties and independents got into parliament. The victory set the scene for an unprecedented 10-year rule by the charismatic prime minister who first emerged from the conservative, religious right. Suspicion about his alleged religious agenda fueled a vituperative campaign.

Last night he sought to heal the divisions. The electorate voted for a government of the centre, he said, after having before the poll purged his parliamentary list of religious conservatives and brought in female, liberal, and younger candidates.

EU membership remained a commitment, he said, challenging the growing hostility to Turkey's EU ambitions among center-right governments in Europe. He pledged to be a prime minister of all Turks, including his political enemies.

Earlier he offered an olive branch to powerful opponents in the Ankara elite who suspect his party of seeking to dismantle the secular foundations of modern Turkey and pursuing an Islamist agenda.

"We are the strongest advocates of a democratic, secular, social state governed by the rule of law," he said.

"I call on all leaders not to close their doors. Let's get around a table and discuss the problems of Turkey's democracy and make the rule of law reign." Mr Erdogan has been confronted by the military, the opposition and million-strong street protests in recent weeks.

The scale of his victory last night shored up his government's legitimacy both domestically and internationally, putting him in an unassailable position and leaving the military licking their wounds.

It remains to be seen if the mandate will quickly dissolve the air of crisis that has enveloped Turkey in recent months.

The possible threat of a coup, deadlock between government and opposition over a new head of state, pressure for a military invasion of northern Iraq to crack down on Turkish Kurdish guerrillas sheltering there, poor relations with the US over Iraq, and near-paralysis in Turkey's efforts to negotiate membership of the EU - all these are issues piling up in the in-tray.

The multiple challenges have produced an outpouring of extreme nationalism, resulting in the parliamentary presence of the MHP, widely viewed as neo-fascist, with a paramilitary wing. Its leader campaigned with a hangman's noose, his preferred solution to the Kurdish insurgency in the south-east.