Turkey’s Outgoing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have won his country’s first direct presidential election with a clear majority of 52 percent, enough to avoid a run-off.  Erdogan rode a wave of conservative Muslim support and may further weaken the secular republic.

“Today the national will won once again, today democracy won once again. Those who didn’t vote for me won as much as those who did, those who don’t like me won as much as those who do,” Erdogan told supporters.

Critics fear the authoritarian Erdogan will move to consolidate power into what was a once a largely ceremonial position.  With pronounced contempt for any dissent, Erdogan’s years an prime minister have been marked with violent crackdown on Intellectuals, Leftists, Environmentalists, and Workers in the cities while resting on the approval of the largely less-educated, religious masses in the rural parts of the population of 77 million people. 

In May, the fruits of Erdogan’s divisive rule became apparent when he visited a town where more than 300 miners died in the country’s worst-ever mining disaster.  Instead of calming protesters who were legitimately critical of lax safety inspections, he sent in the cops.  Even one of his close aides got in on kicking the crap out of protesters. 

Last year, a sit-in by a handful of environmentalist protesters who wanted to save a couple of trees in a park was met with tear gas and water cannons.  So outraged were critics that it almost immediately grew into massive anti-Erdogan street protests involving hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters in every major city.  The crackdown was gruesome.  Eleven people were killed and more than 8,000 people were injured.

And just within the last couple of weeks, Erdogan’s deputy Prime Minister said that women should not laugh in public.  That was met with a storm of selfies posted to social media showing women laughing.  When a female reporter asked Erdogan of the corruption scandals swirling around him, he lashed out at the woman – from the safety of a campaign rally, surrounded by supporters – and called her “shameless militant woman” who should “know her place”.

And despite – or perhaps because – of this pronounced contempt for dissent from his fellow Turks, Erdogan’s rural religious support clung on.  He will be inaugurated on 28 August.