November 2015 Turkish general election

The snap elections were called by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 24 August 2015 after the June election resulted in a hung parliament and coalition negotiations broke down. Although the election, dubbed as a 're-run' of the inconclusive June election by President Erdoğan, was the 7th early election in the history of Turkish politics, it was the first to be overseen by an interim election government. The election rendered the 25th Parliament of Turkey, elected in June, the shortest in the Grand National Assembly's history, lasting for just five months and being in session for a total of 33 hours.^[5]


The elections took place amid security concerns after ceasefire negotiations between the government and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels collapsed in July, causing a resumption of separatist conflict in the predominantly Kurdish south-east of the country. Close to 150 security personnel lost their lives in the ensuing conflict, causing tensions between Turkish and Kurdish nationalists and raising security concerns over whether an election could have been peacefully conducted in the south-east, where conditions were described as a 'worsening bloodshed' by observers.^[6][7][8] Critics accused the government of deliberately sparking the conflict in order to win back votes it had lost to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and decrease the turnout in Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) strongholds.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} The election was preceded by the deadliest terrorist attack in Turkey's modern history, after two suicide bombers killed 102 people attending a peace rally in central Ankara.^[14] Numerous political parties, notably the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), ended up either entirely cancelling or significantly toning down their election campaigns following the attack. Fehmi Demir, the leader of the Rights and Freedoms Party (HAK-PAR), was killed in a traffic accident six days before the election.^[15]


Amid speculation that the election would likely result in a second hung parliament, pollsters and commentators were found to have drastically underestimated the AKP vote, which bore resemblance to their record 2011 election victory.^[16][17] With 49.5% of the vote and 317 seats, the party won a comfortable majority of 84, while the CHP retained its main opposition status with 134 seats and 25.4% of the vote. The results were widely seen as a 'shock' win for the AKP and was hailed as a massive personal victory for President Erdoğan.^[18] The MHP and the HDP both saw decreases in support, with both hovering dangerously close to the 10% election threshold needed to win seats. The MHP, which was seen to have been punished for its perceivably unconstructive stance since June, halved their parliamentary representation from 80 to 40 and won 11.9% of the vote, while the HDP came third in terms of seats with 59 MPs despite coming fourth in terms of votes with 10.7%.^[19] The elections were broadly regarded as free and fair but were overshadowed by the violence between the Turkish state and the PKK, with concern that the electoral victory may embolden President Erdoğan to further crackdown upon free speech.^[20]