The Turkish ‘tricolor’

If on Sunday, Aug. 10, the residents of Eskişehir and Tunceli voted for Prime Minister / President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, instead of rival candidates and the residents of Bitlis in the southeast voted for Selahattin Demirtaş instead of Mr. Erdoğan, Turkey would have boasted a perfect map featuring three different countries in one: three regions physically separated from each other with full territorial integrity and without even a “foreign” spot in each one’s territory.

Turkey’s 2014 Presidential Election looked as if voters in three neighboring countries went to the ballot boxes on the same day to elect a common president for all three. And naturally, the candidate from the most populous country comfortably won the election. But the three countries within the same country have been cohabiting for decades, although they have only realized that more recently.

“The voting ‘map’ looks more like a real map with borders. It represents deepening divisions along ideological lines and fading chances of peaceful cohabitation. In simplistic terms, Turkey houses three socio-political types of non-reconciliatory citizens: autonomy-minded Kurds in the east, an alliance of conservative Muslims and liberals in the Anatolian heartland and secular Turks on the western and southern coastline. What’s more complicated is the fact that each zone hosts, in non-negligible quantities, minority groups from the other two typologies/zones.”

The preceding lines are from this column on Sept. 14, 2010, shortly after a Justice and Development Party (AKP)-sponsored referendum won 58 percent of the vote. (“Self-rule for eastern [and western] Turkey?”). On Sunday, the same map of three neighboring countries...