Irish Examiner view: Leaders need careful selection

Elections in Turkey offered the opportunity for it and its 65m voters to choose a new direction

At one stage, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seemed certain to usher in a third decade of rule. Picture: Ali Unal/AP

It is more than a century since Turkey was routinely described as “the sick man of Europe” and Sunday’s election offered the opportunity for it and its 65m voters to choose a new direction after eight years of the incumbent, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

While preliminary results were emerging on Sunday night, it was too early to say whether Mr Erdoğan’s AKP had done enough to recover from significant setbacks, including inflation and currency crises and the reputational damage caused by the response to the earthquakes which claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people and generated criticism over shoddy building procedures.