The ruling party in Turkey for 13 years, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) failed to secure the 276 seats required to form a majority government in the last general election held Ton June 7 this year. The party had been losing popularity for some time due to its increasingly authoritarian style of governance, inability to revive the economy, and failure to negotiate a solution to the Kurdish problem. The pro-Kurdish HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party), which opted to run as a party in this election for the first time, managed to pass the 10-percent barrier, which reduced the number of seats in Parliament that would have otherwise gone to the AKP, thereby bringing back the possibility of a coalition government in the country after more than a decade. The AKP received 40.91 percent of the nationwide vote, the main opposition party CHP (Republican People’s Party) 24.78 percent, and the MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) 16.25 percent, while the HDP, which widened its appeal beyond its core Kurdish vote to centre-left and secularist segments disillusioned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, obtained 13.42 percent. These percentages translated to 259 seats for the AKP, 132 for the CHP, 80 for the MHP and 80 for the HDP.

Since the AKP failed to get the required 276 seats to form a majority government, Turkey must form a coalition government within 45 days from June 7 to avoid a fresh election. At this stage, there appear to be three possible scenarios. One: a coalition between the AKP and the MHP; two: a minority government of the CHP and MHP with outside support during the vote of confidence from the HDP; or three: a “grand coalition” between the AKP and CHP. Although each of the three opposition parties has publicly ruled out the possibility of a coalition with the AKP, there are signs that the CHP or MHP may agree to work with the AKP if it agrees to certain conditions, such as constraining Erdogan to his constitutionally prescribed powers. Coalition-building efforts and inter-party dialogue will therefore define the coming weeks.

Elections results, however, have thwarted President Erdogan’s plans to change the country’s Constitution and transform Turkey’s parliamentary system into a presidential one. A referendum in 2010 in Turkey allowed for direct Presidential elections. In August 2014 Erdogan, who till then had been Prime Minister and leader of the ruling AKP, became Turkey’s first directly elected President. Erdogan had argued that the current Parliamentary system was ineffective and called for Turkey to move towards a strong Presidential form of government. Erdogan turned the recent ballot into a kind of referendum on his drive to rewrite the country’s Constitution, abolish parliamentarianism and install a powerful new executive presidency occupied by himself. His failure to convince the electorate to help him do so had its roots in both Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy.