Early this year President Ismet Inönü and his Republican People's Party won wide respect by promising Turkey the first unrigged elections in her history, but some Turks felt the respect had been cheaply earned. Nearly everyone thought that the People's Party would come through the elections with a safe majority and that it would keep on running the government as it had ever since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923.
Last week, however, the "first honest elections" lived up to their advance billing in a surprising way. Almost 80% of the country's voters turned out to cast their...
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