The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
Celebrations in Diyarbakir for the victory of the HDP. Demotix/ Aurore Belot. All rights reserved.The Turkish general elections of June 2015 yielded two important results exposing the social transformations that have occurred in the last few years. The first concerns the decline of AKP,[1] whose share of the total vote dropped to 40.66% of (in 2011 it had been 49.9%). The second is the remarkable rise of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which scooped up 12.96% of the vote (up from 5.75% of cast ballots in 2011[2]).
These two developments are interrelated, as the HDP had to overcome the 10% election threshold to be able to enter the National Assembly, due to the Turkish election system. They now hold 80 seats in parliament. As a consequence, AKP’s seats declined from 327 to 258. The People’s Republican Party (CHP), the main oppositional party, which represents Kemalist secularism at large in the political sphere, was expected to obtain all the secularist votes criticizing AKP’s Islamist politics. Despite the frustration of its electors, it maintained its usual percentage (25.13% of vote).
