About 53 million voters went to the polls last Sunday to elect their local representatives. According to unofficial results, the AK Party gained 45.5 percent of the vote, increasing its share about seven points from 38.8 percent in the 2009 local elections. As expected, Prime Minister Erdoğan's ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party came out as the clear winner of the March 30 local elections. This is a major victory for any party that has been in power for 11 years.The anti-Erdoğan coalition failed to make any gains and Erdoğan strengthened his support base. Months of vicious attacks and smear campaigns made little impact on the voters. Abuse of judicial powers, leaked tapes and personal vendettas backfired.While Erdoğan enjoys another electoral victory, his sixth since 2002, the opposition parties are the sore losers. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) increased its vote by a few points to 27.8 percent but lost major cities such as Antalya, Artvin and Tunceli where it has previously been rather strong. CHP is once again cornered in the coastal cities, though this time without the big city of Antalya, and has shown no presence in central and eastern Anatolia. CHP's unholy alliance with the Gülenists brought it no profits, only exposing its unprincipled pragmatism.CHP's nomination of conservative candidates, as was the case in the Ankara race, could have been an interesting strategy but it failed to work because CHP's own urban-secularist base did not embrace it. CHP's overtures to use a semireligious language towards conservativeobservant voters were not of any benefit either because the religious voters did not believe in the sincerity of religious language coming from CHP. Making both its traditional base and potential voters unhappy, CHP lost another election.The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), winning 15.2 percent, ran a sluggish campaign and performed equally as poor to lose several cities to the AK Party.Winning about 6.4 percent in eastern Anatolia, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) won some new cities but failed to increase its votes across the board. The Turkish and Kurdish versions of 19th century nationalism once again had no national appeal.The Gülenists, who claimed to have millions of supporters and sought to shape the election results, put their support behind the CHP but failed miserably to make any gains for it. Their virulent anti-Erdoğan campaign had the opposite impact of consolidating Erdoğan's base against the Gülenists, neo-nationalists and other political parties. The Gülenists exposed and discredited themselves, and nobody believes the claim that they are a non-political religious service movement.The election results made two things clear: The Gülenist claim to have millions of supporters is a self-proclaimed urban legend and their attacks on Erdoğan and his family had practically no impact on the religious-conservative base in Turkey.The poor performance of the opposition parties that the Gülen Movement supported underscore that the Gülenist media outlets, social media campaigns, doorto- door canvassing and similar tactics had no actual relevance for Turkish politics. It will be to their benefit to give up political machination and return to what they claim to do, religious-educational service.With another comfortable win behind it, Erdoğan's government can now get back to the main issues of political reform, economic growth, EU negotiations and the peaceful resolution of the Kurdish issue. Even the unfinished business of writing a new constitution might be given fresh consideration. On the foreign policy front, the government will now focus on the Cyprus negotiations, ongoing civil war in Syria, upcoming elections in Iraq and the normalization of relations with Israel.As noted by many, this election was not a local election but a vote of confidence for Erdoğan. He passed that vote. That's why this is more than merely an electoral victory for Erdoğan. This is confirmation of his 11-year rule where the country has progressed in all areas of life, including democracy, rule of law, political participation, economy and foreign policy. Regardless of their political affiliation, gender or class, all Turkish citizens have benefitted from the political stability and economic growth of the last 11 years. On March 30, they voted for stability and development against ideological adventures.The results also show that the vast majority of the Turkish electorate does not approve of attempts to subvert and shape politics through such illicit means as illegal wiretappings, baseless allegations and smear campaigns. In this sense, Turkish democracy has won and the electorate has once again confirmed its commitment to democratic legitimacy.