'Simply a disaster': The results of Turkey's historic election were surprising - and ominous

On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Erdogan and his party regained their parliamentary majority in a landslide win that outperformed every poll and surprised even the most seasoned analysts.

The win has given Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) an indisputable mandate to govern, implicitly granting legitimacy to the authoritarian tactics undertaken by the president in the run-up to elections.

"The national will manifested itself on November 1 in favor of stability," Erdogan told reporters after praying at a mosque in Istanbul, adding that the world must respect the results of the election.

But around the world, concerns linger that the win has only served to further embolden a man with decidedly authoritarian ambitions and strain the country's traditional alliances.

"The elections results could push Turkey further into authoritarianism as the AKP continues to undermine the rule of law and undertake reprisals against the opposition," Aykan Erdemir, a nonresident fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former member of Turkish parliament, told Business Insider by email.

"Under four years of single-party rule by the AKP, Turkey could drift further from the European Union and NATO."

A senior official from the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which had expected to enter into coalition talks with the AKP, put it more bluntly: The result is "simply a disaster."

'Our neighbors were scared'

The AKP lost its parliamentary majority in June - largely due to the success of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) passing the electoral threshold of 10% to be represented in parliament for the first time.

Since then, Erdogan has relied on increasingly hardline tactics to shore up support from Turkish nationalists and suppress dissent.

In July, Ankara began bombing the Kurdish PKK in northern Iraq, reigniting a 30-year insurgency. The war served as a huge gamble, but it appears to have paid off: The escalating violence is, some Kurds say, what led many of their friends and neighbors to vote for the AKP instead of the pro-Kurdish HDP.

'A Putin-style presidency'

A particularly brutal crackdown on the media in the days leading up to the election did not help ease Turkey's volatile political climate. Last Wednesday, Turkish police raided the offices of an opposition media company and forced two TV stations that had already been taken off the air to stop broadcasting on the Internet.

"He will most likely try to settle scores with the remaining critical media, businesses and NGOs, thus further undermining Turkey's democracy, rights and freedoms, and rule of law," he added. "The next general elections, expected to take place in 2019, could end up being the most unfair and fraudulent elections to date."

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