I noted that at least the HDP passed the ten percent threshold needed to enter parliament. That, surely, was something to be happy about? Back in 1999, the year when I cast my first vote in a Turkish election, the leftist party of my choice, whose leader, Ufuk Uras, quoted passages by the Nobel-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk in his speeches, got 0.8 percent of the vote, while xenophobic and statist parties won a majority in parliament. But despite the great advances the left has made in Turkey in the past decade, my friend was still inconsolable, as were many others I met that day.

My friend's failure to comprehend the feelings and thoughts of the people who form the bulk of the AKP's support—voters who are by and large more religious and conservative—is indicative of the Turkish press as a whole. Among journalists, the ignorance of the public is almost a given. The poor and the conservative sections of society are seen as an army of ignorant people suffering from malnutrition, their political instincts honed by a set of fascistic impulses. Many columnists, seeing the society though this perspective, feel obliged to liberate Turkey, a task they believe can be accomplished by writing more newspaper columns.

Following the announcement of the results, some liberals were quick to announce their decision to leave the country and live in the civilized world. Others were furious about how stupid Turkey's people were. One compared conservative voters to the urban poor visiting farmers' markets late at night to buy rotten vegetables they can afford. Another compared them to victims of domestic violence who continue to live with their abusive spouses: Turks, in other words, were masochists. A number of liberals announced they had given up belief in elections entirely. Since the people of Turkey were this ignorant, any minute spent with them on a public cause would be a wasted one.

English readers are lucky to have a vision of Turkey that counters the one offered by the international press. The protagonist of Orhan Pamuk's new book A Strangeness in My Mind is a street vendor named Mevlut Karatas, whose chief concern is to lead a safe, healthy, and happy life. Having migrated to Istanbul from a poor Anatolian town, Mevlut works on Istanbul's labyrinthine streets from an early age. He is a good representative of the Turkish homo economicus: an essentially self-interested figure, Mevlut seeks to maximize his profits. The things he wants from life are not so outrageous: a house to live in, a peaceful country where he can sell his offerings, and a bit of state support. For such people, who have no country to flee to and no rich family to support them, developments like the weakening of the Turkish lira, the constant bombings on the streets, and a prospective collapse of the economic system, did not come as good news. It was largely due to such economic and security concerns that people voted the way they did in Sunday's elections, which was basically a referendum between single-party rule and a coalition government.