THE TURKISH ELECTION

There were two clear results from the Turkish election. The first is that voters are broadly happy with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's track record, giving him 326 seats in the 550-seat Parliament and a third term of single-party Government.

The second, on the other hand, is that they do not want a new constitution written unilaterally by Mr. Erdogan's Justice and Development (AK) Party. The existing constitution was drafted by the military following a coup in 1980, and all are agreed that it has to be changed. In the event, AK fell short of both the 367 seats (two thirds of the total) required for unilateral constitutional changes, and the 330 seats (60%) whereby changes can be passed by Parliament and then ratified in a referendum. That was despite Turkey's system of proportional representation, which sets an unusually high threshold for parties to obtain representation of 10% (2-5% is more usual) and so puts small ones at a disadvantage.

AK and Mr. Erdogan will now have to write the new constitution in conjunction with the opposition. In the long run, this will be no bad thing. Constitutions are supposed to last through thick and thin; and those that are written by only one section of society rarely last (witness Turkey's current one). With the European Union looking on anxiously from the sidelines, a broad-based constitution can only be to the country's good.

Walter Blotscher