I had written in an earlier Al-Monitor article that the Erdogan government would be successful in the elections and the Gulenists would be the losers. Some analysts did not want to see this reality and failed miserably. But for analysts who understand Turkish society, the results are not surprising.
According to Gulenists and some other analysts who also write in these columns, the Dec. 17 graft probe and the tape-recording leaks that followed were enough to topple any political authority. The opposition really believed that it was going to be easy, because according to them the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had committed illegitimate actions that disregarded the law. They were further emboldened by believing that Gulenists had more ammunition in reserve against the AKP and, anyway, AKP’s prestige in the Western world was rapidly eroding. Many writers were confident that the United States was unhappy with the AKP government, therefore a redesign of Turkish politics was inevitable and that meant a Turkey without Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.