The Turkish general election of November 2015 was held on 1 November 2015 throughout the 85 electoral districts of Turkey to elect 550 members to the Grand National Assembly. It was the 25th general election in the history of the Republic of Turkey and elected the country’s 26th Parliament. The election resulted in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) regaining a Parliamentary majority, having lost it five months earlier in the June 2015 general election.
More than 40 million Turks headed to the polls on Sunday for a repeat parliamentary election.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) led the polls with a landslide 49-percent majority, according to unofficial results from the vote.
With 98 percent of the votes counted, the AK Party won 49.29 percent of the votes while the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) secured 25.5 percent. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) lost 25 percent of its votes as compared to the results of June 7 election, winning 12 percent. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) won 10.69 percent, just above the 10-percent threshold to enter Parliament.
The results mean that the AK Party has won back its parliamentary majority and will be able to form a single-party government again after losing its parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002 in the June 7 election.
The prime minister and AKP leader Ahmet Davutoğlu tweeted simply “Elhamdulillah,” or “Thanks be to God,” before emerging from his family home in the central Anatolian city of Konya to tell crowds of cheering supporters that the win was “a victory for our democracy, and our people”.
The Turkish lira and stocks soared on Nov. 2 after President’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was returned to power in a stunning weekend election victory.
The lira was up 4.4 percent at 2.78 to the US dollar in early trade, around its highest level in seven years, after tumbling over 25 percent this year on Turkey’s economic woes and political turmoil.
The main index on the Istanbul stock exchange, the BIST, was up 5.4 percent at 83,735 points shortly after the opening.
