Sunday’s Turkish General Election will be fought our by the ruling AKP against the centralist MHP and the Leftist CHP. All over Turkey, since we have been in the Country, every Village, Town and City has been festooned with the banners of each Party and the streets echoing to the sounds of the load speaker vans belting out the virtues of their respective parties. The money being spent by all three is impressive.

The AKP are campaigning on a Right wing agenda of reverting Turkey to a Muslim State. This despite the fact that they were elected 5 years ago on a promise of building a modern secular state. However, this line plays well in the poorer south and south east regions were this election will apparently be won or lost. The MHP are centralist and want the status quo to remain and the CHP are Leftist and want something else! Not sure. Anyway, the feeling amongst those people we have spoken to is that the ruling AKP will win with a reduced majority despite them being a bunch of lying, cheating, thieving bastards who are out only to remain in power and line their own pockets.

Sound so much like the life of our own dear Queen!

We’ll see.

Obviously, an AKP win will put the kibosh on EU membership,(assuming they implement what they are saying) but again, according to the cousin of the owner of the restaurant were we had dinner last night who now lives in Germany but makes T shirts in Istanbul and sell them in Italy, the EU is not worth being in because it’s designed to further the ambitions of Germany who have achieved thru economics what they failed to achieve by war. 

I just do not understand where these people get such strange ideas,

Sand