page_title: June 2015 Turkish general election
section_title: Electoral system
hierarchical_section_title: June 2015 Turkish general election / Electoral system
caption_attribution_description: English: Voting taking place at Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul for the Turkish general election of 7 June 2015
context_page_description: The Turkish general election of June 2015 took place on 7 June 2015 in all 85 electoral districts of Turkey to elect 550 members to the Grand National Assembly. This was the 24th general election in the history of the Turkish Republic, electing the country's 25th Parliament. The result was the first hung parliament since the 1999 general election. Unsuccessful attempts to form a coalition government resulted in a snap general election being called for November 2015.
  The Justice and Development Party, which had governed Turkey since 2002, lost its parliamentary majority and won 258 seats with 40.9% of the vote, clearly missing the aimed two-thirds majority for the implementation of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's call for an executive presidency. The main opposition Republican People's Party also fared worse than their 2011 result, and won 132 seats with 25.0% of the vote. The Nationalist Movement Party had been projected to win over many disaffected voters from the AKP. Its share of the vote increased, and the party won 80 seats with 16.3% of the vote.
context_section_description: Turkey elects 550 Members of Parliament to the Grand National Assembly using the D'Hondt method, a party-list proportional representation system. In order to return MPs to parliament, a party needs to gain more than 10% of the vote nationwide, meaning that parties may win the most votes in certain areas but not win any MPs due to a low result overall. The parliamentary threshold of 10% has been subject to intense scrutiny by opposition members, since all votes cast for parties polling under 10% are spoilt and allow the parties overcoming the national threshold to win seats much more easily, e.g. in the 2002 general election where the AKP won with 34.28% of the vote but won nearly two-thirds of the seats.
  The parliamentary threshold does not apply to independents, meaning that Kurdish nationalist politicians who poll strongly in the south-east but are not able to win 10% of the overall vote stand as independents rather than as party candidates. This was the case in the 2007 and 2011 general election, where the Kurdish Democratic Society Party and the Peace and Democracy Party fielded independent candidates respectively.
caption: Citizens voting at customs in Sabiha Gökçen International Airport for the general election in Istanbul, 7 June 2015
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "26", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "967", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "641"}