Turkish election: ruling party on course to lose majority

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, suffered his most significant electoral defeat in more than a decade on Sunday when his ruling Justice and Development, or AK, party appeared on course to lose its parliamentary majority – and leaving it in search of a coalition partner in order to form a government.

Based on 99% of all votes counted, the AKP secured 41% of the vote, followed by the Republican People’s party (CHP) at 25%, the Nationalist Movement party (MHP) on 16.5% and the pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) fourth at a surprise 12.5%.

Erdoğan, Turkey’s most popular modern leader but also its most divisive, had hoped for a crushing victory for the AKP, to allow it to change the constitution and create a more powerful presidency. Its failure to win an overall majority marks an end to 12 years of uninterrupted, stable single-party rule since it first took power in 2002.

The leftist HDP, the surprise star of this year’s parliament elections, passed Turkey’s unusually high election threshold of 10%.

The results suggest voters have rejected the ruling party’s attempt to remake the constitution and give more power to Erdoğan, for which it would have needed a two-thirds majority in parliament – or 367 seats. Instead, the AKP appears to have won 258 seats – falling short of the 276 seats required to form a majority government.

The party’s projected share of the vote, at around 41%, is below the 49% it received in the parliamentary elections in 2011.