The positive elections campaigns carried out by political parties justify the AK Party's struggle against military tutelage to strengthen the democratization process of Turkish politics

This article aims at presenting a descriptive account of the March 2009 local elections in Turkey. Comparing the general and local elections since 2004, an overall evaluation of trends in electoral preferences is presented. Using provincial general council election results, a detailed geographical comparative analysis of the 2004 and 2009 local elections is also carried out. The analyses show that the AKP’s rise has stalled but it still remains as the dominant power in the party system. The electoral map continues to be divided between the coastal western and most developed provinces where the opposition is significantly supported, the east and southeastern provinces where the Kurdish ethnic electoral support is rising and the more conservative provinces in between where the AKP continues to be dominant with the MHP trailing behind. Even though the March 2009 elections had all the characteristics of a local election, they also revel the rising trends in electoral behaviour in Turkey.

The Turkish-Kurdish peace process is facing challenges which can be ironed out only through politics not violence.

Cem Duran Uzun: It seems difficult to reach a consensus required for a constitution draft in a political environment of struggle and tension caused by the election process.

As Turkey has become the scene of a corruption case on December 17, 2013, no one anticipated what the relevant investigation may lead to.

There had also been numerous corruption investigations into municipalities – governed both by the AK Party and other political parties. Why didn’t those investigations attract as much attention as the Dec. 17 investigation?

Corruption cases have a devastating impact on political parties. Turkey was recently hit by a corruption probe that shook the country's government. On December 17, 2013, Turkish police detained over 50 people as part of an investigation into alleged corruption.

On Dec. 17, 2013, an operation in which a group of irrelevant files of investigations and names were merged was carried out with the joint efforts of prosecutors and the police.

The upcoming election is a crucial moment for the AK Party, needed to highlight the support of the people in the party's mission to promote political stability while fighting this new tutelage

After the Dec. 17 operation, the local elections that are supposed to take place on March 30 have come to mean much more than local elections.

Identifying the Dec. 17 operation as an attack against the AK Party government by the Gülen Movement, conservative voters are likely to rally behind the Turkish prime minister in upcoming local elections. Consequently, the controversy might increase the ruling party's popularity among its core constituencies

The Dec. 17 operation transformed the local elections into a vote of confidence for the AK Party government. March 30 is no longer about municipalities and town councils but Mr. Erdoğan's political future

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party), with the elections on March 30, will have run in a total of eight elections since its founding. If the polls and the rallies are any indication, it seems that AK Party will prevail once again.

What is more important is that if the struggling actors switch to embracing and democratic statements, it is possible they will have already lost credibility in the eyes of the public.

In other words, extra-parliamentary forces working against the government have effectively resulted in Erdoğan's association with democracy, the ballot box and popular will.

SETA Political Researcher Galip Dalay said that there is no big drop of support for Erdoğan and his party due to the tension.

One of the reasons why political jargon is framed as if it were a general election is because of the Dec. 17 operation that caused local elections to be pushed out of its normal process.