2018 Turkish parliamentary election

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All 600 seats in the Grand National Assembly 301 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	86.22% (0.99pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu Sezai Temelli Pervin Buldan Party AK Party CHP HDP Alliance People Nation None[a] Last election 49.50%, 317 seats 25.32%, 134 seats 10.76%, 59 seats Seats won 295 146 67 Seat change 22 12 8 Popular vote 21,338,693 11,354,190 5,867,302 Percentage 42.56% 22.65% 11.70% Swing 6.94pp 2.67pp 0.94pp   Fourth party Fifth party   Leader Devlet Bahçeli Meral Akşener Party MHP İYİ Alliance People Nation Last election 11.90%, 40 seats – Seats won 49 43 Seat change 9 New Popular vote 5,565,331 4,993,479 Percentage 11.10% 9.96% Swing 0.80pp New
Seats won Winners according to electoral districts (top) and provincial districts (bottom)
Prime Minister (office abolished after election) before election Binali Yıldırım AK Party Elected Speaker of the Assembly Binali Yıldırım AK Party

Parliamentary elections were held in Turkey on 24 June 2018 as part of general elections, with presidential elections taking place on the same day. Originally scheduled for 27 October 2019, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called snap elections on 18 April after months of speculation. With the passage of a series of constitutional amendments in the 2017 referendum, the number of MPs will be increased from the previous 550 to 600. These representatives will be elected by the constituents of the 87 electoral districts of Turkey by party-list proportional representation.

The referendum in 2017 triggered a transition from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency. As such, the Grand National Assembly elected in 2018 was not entitled to appoint the prime minister and cabinet after the elections. While the office of prime minister was set to be abolished altogether, cabinet ministers will primarily serve at the pleasure of the president, who is to fill the role of both head of state and head of government.^[1]

Background

Elections of 2015

After the elections of June 2015 resulted in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) losing its majority, the four parties in the Grand National Assembly were faced with the prospect of a coalition government. However, after government formation talks broke down, early elections were called for November 2015. The snap election saw the AKP regain its absolute parliamentary majority with 317 of 550 seats. The remainder went to the Republican People's Party (CHP) on 134 seats, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) on 59, and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) on 40. The results of the November 2015 elections allowed the AKP to form a single-party government under its leader Ahmet Davutoğlu, but not to change the constitution or call a referendum, which would have required two-thirds or three-fifths majorities, respectively. As such, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was left nominally unable to trigger a switch from a parliamentary to a presidential system, as his AKP had campaigned for ahead of the elections. Additionally, he faced opposition on the matter from Prime Minister Davutoğlu, who allegedly held reservations over a change in form of government. In May 2016, Davutoğlu resigned from both the AKP leadership and the premiership, citing disagreements with Erdoğan as part of the reason. He was replaced in both capacities by Binali Yıldırım.

Coup attempt and state of emergency

On 15 July 2016, sections of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) launched a coup d'état against the Turkish government, including the ruling AKP government of Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Military jets were reportedly spotted flying over Ankara just before 23:00 EEST (UTC+3), while both the Fatih Sultan Mehmet and Bosphorus bridges in Istanbul were closed by the armed forces. In a televised address on the TRT station, the coup plotters, who referred to themselves as the Peace at Home Council (Turkish: Yurtta Sulh Konseyi), claimed that "The government ... been dismissed from office".^[2] However, the coup attempt ultimately failed, after President Erdoğan addressed the Turkish people through the FaceTime mobile application, urging them to resist the coup plotters.^[3] By the morning of 16 July 2016, the situation had reportedly been brought under control, while the Turkish government accused the Gülen movement of having orchestrated the putsch, and vowed to purge state institutions of its members. On 15 July 2016, Erdoğan announced the introduction of a three-month state of emergency. Under Turkish law, states of emergency may only be upheld for three months at a time, though they may be renewed an unlimited number of times by parliamentary vote. The post-coup state of emergency in Turkey has been extended seven times, and were officially lifted on the 19th of July, although observers criticized the administration as "nothing much changed", with one in particular noting "Although the lifting of the state of emergency is symbolically positive, in that the clampdown we saw after the coup has come to an end... I'm not sure this is going to make a very big difference".^[4] The elections of June 2018 are likely to take place under the ongoing state of emergency.^[5]

April 2017 referendum

Electoral system

The 600 members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey will be elected by party-list proportional representation in 87 electoral districts, by the D'Hondt method. For the purpose of legislative elections, 77 of Turkey's 81 provinces serves as a single district. Due to their large populations, the provinces of Bursa and İzmir are divided into two districts, while the provinces of Ankara and Istanbul are each divided into three.

Since the introduction of Turkey's Constitution of 1982, political parties are required to pass an electoral threshold of 10% of the nationwide popular vote in order to obtain seats in parliament, with all those falling below the threshold disregarded for seat distribution purposes. Furthermore, parties must be officially organised in at least half of provinces (41 or more) and in at least a third of districts in those provinces, and must nominate two candidates in 41 or more provinces, in order to be entitled to seats.

Electoral alliances law

In early 2018, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the far-right opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) brought forward joint proposals for an electoral alliance law. This was widely speculated to be a result of the MHP's low poll ratings, which made it seemingly impossible to surpass the 10% threshold and win seats in future elections. The MHP had previously announced that it would support the re-election of AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the Presidency, and claimed it was open to contesting future parliamentary elections in an alliance with the AKP.

The new electoral alliances law allowed parties to form alliances and submit them to the YSK, meaning that they would be grouped together under their alliance name on the ballot paper. In addition, voters would be given the option to vote for the alliance as a whole if they did not prefer a specific party. Votes cast for alliances rather than parties would then be distributed to each member party of the alliance at electoral district-level depending on their vote shares. For example, if Party A and Party B were in an alliance and received 60 and 40 votes in an electoral district respectively, then 60% of votes cast for the alliance as a whole would be given to Party A while 40% would be given to Party B. Thus, if 10 votes were cast for the alliance, Party A would have a total of 66 (60+6) votes and Party B would have 44 (40+4) votes.

Parties contesting the election within an alliance would not be subject to the 10% threshold. As long as the Alliance in total won above 10% of the national vote, any party within it would be eligible to win seats regardless of how low their vote share.

The election alliance law also contained numerous controversial changes to election law, including the legalisation of unverified ballot papers to be incorporated in the count. The issue of counting unverified ballots caused a huge controversy during the 2017 constitutional referendum, causing the opposition to allege large-scale electoral fraud and reject the results. On 31 May, the Constitutional Court of Turkey rejected the opposition's bid to nullify the controversial changes.^[6]

Electoral districts