Turnout: 85.23%
About this election
A snap general election was held on 1 November 2015, five months after the inconclusive June vote, after coalition talks failed. In a result few polls had predicted, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) recovered to 49.50% and 317 seats, comfortably regaining the single-party majority it had lost. The Republican People's Party (CHP) held steady on 25.32% and 134 seats, while both the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP, 11.90%, 40) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP, 10.76%, 59) lost ground. Turnout rose to 85.23%.
Turkey was still a parliamentary republic, but the election was dominated by the question of whether it would remain one. President Erdoğan and the AKP framed the choice as one between stability under a restored AKP majority and the chaos and violence that had followed the hung parliament, while the opposition warned that a renewed majority would clear the path to an executive presidency. The 550-member Grand National Assembly again chose the government.
As in June, members were elected by D'Hondt proportional representation in provincial constituencies under a 10% national threshold. The HDP again cleared the threshold, but only narrowly, amid an atmosphere of intimidation; had it fallen below 10%, most of its seats would have passed to the AKP, potentially handing Erdoğan the supermajority he sought for constitutional change.
The campaign took place against a backdrop of renewed war with the PKK in the south-east, a refugee crisis from the Syrian civil war, and the trauma of the October Ankara bombing. The AKP's message of security and stability resonated with voters frightened by five months of turmoil, and many MHP and even some HDP voters returned to the governing party. The HDP, with several offices attacked and its rallies curtailed for security reasons, was unable to campaign freely.
The AKP under Ahmet Davutoğlu staged a remarkable recovery; the CHP remained the steady main opposition; the MHP slumped as nationalist voters defected to the AKP; and the HDP, while still in parliament, fell back from its June high.
The AKP's restored majority ended the coalition question and re-established single-party government, but it fell short of the two-thirds (367) or three-fifths (330) needed to change the constitution outright or call a referendum unaided. Erdoğan would secure his presidential system instead through the 2017 referendum, with the support of the MHP. The result confirmed his political resilience and his ability to turn instability to electoral advantage.
The swing of nearly nine points to the AKP in just five months was extraordinary and widely debated. Analysts attributed it to a flight to security amid the violence, the failure of the opposition to offer a credible governing alternative, and the advantages of incumbency in a media environment heavily tilted toward the government. International observers noted that the vote was held in a climate that limited fair campaigning, particularly for the HDP.
The AKP's recovery came largely at the expense of the MHP, which lost roughly a third of its June vote as nationalist supporters, alarmed by renewed PKK violence, rallied behind a governing party promising firm security. The HDP held on above the 10% threshold but lost ground in mixed western provinces, where some of the protest voters who had backed it in June returned to the establishment parties. The CHP's vote barely moved, confirming the stability of its secular, coastal and urban base but also its inability to expand.
The result was greeted with relief in some Western capitals as restoring stability to a key NATO ally and partner in the Syrian refugee crisis, but human-rights groups and election monitors expressed concern about the curtailment of media freedom and the conditions under which the HDP had been forced to campaign. The renewed AKP majority set Turkey firmly on the path toward the constitutional referendum that would follow in 2017.
Turnout of 85.23% was even higher than in June, underlining how seriously Turkish voters took a re-run election widely seen as decisive for the country's direction amid mounting insecurity.
With its majority restored but short of the numbers needed to amend the constitution alone, the AKP set about building the parliamentary coalition for change that it would complete in 2017. The November 2015 result thus marked the moment Erdoğan recovered the initiative he had lost in June: within eighteen months he would secure a referendum on the executive presidency, and within three years he would be governing as Turkey's first executive president. In retrospect the re-run election was the pivot on which the country's constitutional transformation turned, the last general election held under the parliamentary system before the executive presidency took hold.
Supreme Election Council of Turkey (YSK) — ysk.gov.tr.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.