What a difference a little geography will make. With 36 percent of the general vote taken in January 2015 Greece’s leftist SYRIZA points to a “people’s mandate”, whereas in neighboring Turkey 41 percent for the AKP party is a first-place showing, nevertheless, but one greeted with frowns by its supporters and jubilation by the opposition.

The reason, of course, is that the party founded by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, failed to get an outright majority, thus dealing a massive blow to the latter’s quest to rewrite the Turkish constitution and establish a strong executive-style presidential system.

Erdogan was once a “darling” of the western media, which used the moniker “mildly Islamist”, before he exhibited a more pronounced Islamist policy.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) was projected to win almost 13 percent of the vote, meaning it will field deputies in the national assembly for the first time.

HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas ruled out a coalition with the AKP and said election results had put an end to talk of the stronger presidential powers championed by Erdogan.

The right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP took close to 17 percent of the vote).