In the run-up to Turkey’s general election this summer, the country’s nominally neutral president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declared: “Give me four hundred parliamentarians on June 7 and let us change the system peacefully.”

It was an ominous threat to the Turkish people. Either deliver Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) the super majority in parliament it needed to change the constitution and allow Erdoğan to continue centralizing power with a new presidential system — or prepare for a deepening of the instability and violence that marked the end of the AKP’s third successive term in office.

The threat carried real weight in a country where each generation has had its own experience of economic and political crisis. The AKP was itself swept to power in 2002 after years of unstable coalitions and a financial crisis that destroyed the credibility of almost every other political party.