Youth in Turkey’s 2015 Elections
by Aydin Özipek | published June 19, 2015 - 12:48pm
On June 7, Turkish citizens went to the polls to elect the 550 members of the Grand National Assembly. Although the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 41 percent of the vote, it lost its majority in the parliament for the first time since 2002. It was a major blow for the party’s founder, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose plan to become a more powerful executive with fewer checks and balances seems to have been vetoed by the electorate. On the other hand, the deciding factor in the elections was the impressive success of the leftist, Kurdish-majority Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which won 13 percent of the votes (up from 6.5 percent in 2011). The HDP received this additional support mostly from conservative Kurds who had previously voted for Erdoğan’s AKP, as well as from many progressive Turks.
More:Youth in Turkey’s 2015 Elections | Middle East Research and Information Project
