In the recently held elections in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lost majority in the Turkish parliament for the first time in 13 years since 2002. In an election which saw a massive 86% turnout, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 258 seats in the 550-seat parliament. Though the AKP is the single largest party in the Parliament, it lacks the numbers to form the next government on its own. The AKP moreover suffered a 10% decline in its vote share.
This mandate assumes significance for several reasons; the people of Turkey have voted for more inclusion and against the AKP’s policies of divide-and-rule. The left-leaning People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has won 79 seats, and around 12% of the vote. This mandate ensures a significant presence in the Turkish parliament for left forces and to the Kurdish minority of Turkey.
AKP, which has been seen as espousing a dangerous divide-and-rule policy in order to rally its religious-conservative base, was challenged by the HDP’s campaign. The AKP and Erdogan had plans to rewrite the Turkish constitution to establish Erdogan as the executive-President. HDP, on the other hand, ran on a platform defending the rights of ethnic minorities, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The HDP moreover formed an electoral coalition with the Kurdish minority in Turkey’s south-east and progressive forces in Istanbul and elsewhere. The election results will therefore give the Kurds – who, with 20% of Turkey’s population, are the country’s biggest minority – true representation in parliament. In 1980, the military-dictated constitution of Turkey had decreed a 10% threshold of vote share in the elections before a party could enter the Parliament. This clause has over the years often restricted the representation of minorities in the Parliament. The HDP has surpassed the 10% threshold and entered the parliament.
Significantly, 40 percent of the HDP’s newly elected MPs are women, while women hold only 17 per cent of the total seats in the country’s Parliament. Along with Kurdish rights and the rights of women and the LGBT community, the HDP also raised the issues of minimum wages and anti-corruption.
This mandate is also being seen as a culmination of the Gezi Park protests which rocked Turkey in 2013. During the protests, which spread to large parts of the country, several issues were raised, including defending Turkey’s secularism and defending freedom of expression.