Turkey ruling AKP party regains parliamentary majority
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has regained its parliamentary majority which it lost five months ago.
With 99 percent of the votes counted, CNN Turk said partial results shows the AKP has won 49.3 percent, followed by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) with 25.2 percent and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) with 12 percent of the ballots. The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has secured 10.4 percent of the votes.
Polls closed on Sunday at 5:00 pm local time (1500 GMT) in the country’s 81 provinces.
Some 54 million voters were eligible to vote for electing 550 deputies to the Grand National Assembly.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exits a voting booth at a polling station in Istanbul on November 1, 2015. (AFP Photo)
The vote was overseen by Turkish civil society groups and political parties, as well as international monitors.
The 26th Turkish general election comes five months after the AKP, founded by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lost its majority in the parliament and subsequently failed to form a coalition government.
During the vote in June, the AKP ended with 258 seats, while the CHP came in second with 132 seats. The MHP and the HDP garnered 80 seats each.
The election is hoped to put an end to months of tension and instability in Turkey, triggered by two deadly bomb blasts in the city of Suruc and the capital, Ankara, over the past few months.
Tensions have also been on the rise over the performance of the HDP, which managed to become the first pro-Kurdish movement in parliament and received enough seats to block an AKP majority in the previous election.
However, the HDP has been accused of backing the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.
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