



Yet they lost almost every major city. The will of the people is apparently difficult to buy. I’ve just seen how much advertising the AKP bought for the last election and I am in shock. In March, they were No. 2 on TV, No. 1 in newspapers, No. 2 in out-of-home.Yet they lost almost every major city. The will of the people is apparently difficult to buy.

There is a deeper issue here about how good the AKP really is. Academics, journalists, commentators, whether foreign or local, ascribe some genius quality to everything the AKP does. Yet they just spent millions on a campaign that should, on paper, be impossible to lose.

When I see intelligent observers, often friends who I respect, say the AKP would never force a re-run unless they knew they would win, I have to point at this advertising data and question whether there is all that much competence in their decision-making right now.