YEREVAN, MARCH 30, NOYAN TAPAN. "The world financial-economic crisis has had an impact on political processes in Turkey," Turkologist Ruben Safrastian said at the March 30 press conference. In his words, the impact was revealed in the local self-government elections held lately, when the Justice and Development ruling party received unprecedentedly fewer votes than it had recorded in the parliamentary elections. "Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan considered it a persuasion by the people, according to which changes should be done in government's staff," the Turkologist said. According to him, a great part of voters were disappointed with the ruling party because of the increase of the number of unemployed due to the economic crisis, as well as because of corruption scandals. R. Safrastian also said that Turkey's local self-government elections were striking as the votes of the Grey Wolves nationalist party increased as compared with the previous elections. And the other important peculiarity, according to the Turkologist, is that the Kurdistan Party won in the regions populated with Kurds, in particular, the Kurdish candidate won the Diarbekir Mayor's elections.

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