Hollow hat trick for Erdogan

With three consecutive victories at the ballot box — a first in Turkish political history — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ought to be laughing all the way to his mega-mentions in future history books. In reality, he is beset with problems on all sides, both political and economic.  On the domestic front, he had hoped to win a big enough majority to push a new constitution through parliament without the need to consult the opposition. Though his Justice and Development Party (AKP) won five million more votes than it did three years ago, its number of deputies shrank slightly to 326 out of 550. Due to this quirk of the proportional system, Erdogan finds himself bereft of the two-thirds majority in parliament and therefore needs to consult the opposition parties to reach a consensus on rewriting the constitution last ratified in 1982. Many reforms have been introduced as a