Turkish Parliament Speaker election, June–July 2015

June–July 2015 Turkish Parliament Speaker elections
All 550 Members of Parliament voting in the Grand National Assembly ; 367 votes needed to win in the first two rounds; 276 votes needed to win in the third round; A simple majority of votes needed to win in the final round
	Votes for each candidate in all four rounds:; İsmet Yılmaz Deniz Baykal Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu ; Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat Invalid/blank Absent
Speaker before election; Cemil Çiçek ; AK Party	Elected Speaker ; İsmet Yılmaz ; AK Party

Last updated March 22, 2019

The June–July 2015 Turkish Parliament Speaker Elections were held on June 30 and July 1 in order to elect the next Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The election took place due to the election of a new parliament in the 7 June 2015 general election. Outgoing speaker of the 24th Parliament, AKP member Cemil Çiçek, was ineligible to stand as he stood down as an MP at the general election.

This article lists the Speakers of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The name of the parliament of the Republic of Turkey, originally and currently the Grand National Assembly of Turkey since its establishment on 23 April 1920, has for short periods been changed.

Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. East Thrace, located in Europe, is separated from Anatolia by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous strait and the Dardanelles. Turkey is bordered by Greece and Bulgaria to its northwest; Georgia to its northeast; Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the south. Ankara is its capital but Istanbul is the country's largest city. Approximately 70 to 80 per cent of the country's citizens identify as Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority; the size of the Kurdish population is a subject of dispute with estimates placing the figure at anywhere from 12 to 25 per cent of the population.

This is a list of Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the Grand National Assembly for the 25th Parliament of the Republic of Turkey at the June 2015 general election, which was held on 7 June 2015.

Since no party has a majority in the new parliament, this was the most unpredictable speaker election in over a decade. Previous speaker elections held under the AKP majority government era (2002-2015) had all been won by the AKP with little contest from opposition parties, due to their unrealistic prospects of winning.

With all parties in parliament supporting their own candidates up to and including the third round, the election went into a fourth and final round where a simple majority was required to win. The Justice and Development Party candidate İsmet Yılmaz was elected speaker with 258 votes, exactly the same as the number of MPs that the AKP has in Parliament. The Republican People's Party candidate Deniz Baykal, who was serving as acting speaker as the oldest MP in the new parliament, received 182 votes. The failure of the opposition parties to unite behind Baykal was attributed to the Nationalist Movement Party's intention of casting invalid or blank votes during the final round, having refused to support Baykal if the Peoples' Democratic Party supported him as well.^[1]

The Justice and Development Party, abbreviated officially AK Parti in Turkish, is an Islamist political party in Turkey. Developed from the conservative tradition of Turkey's Ottoman past and its Islamic identity, the party is the largest in Turkey. Founded in 2001 by members of a number of existing conservative parties, the party has won pluralities in the six most recent legislative elections, those of 2002, 2007, 2011, June 2015, November 2015, and 2018. The party held a majority of seats for 13 years, but lost it in June 2015, only to regain it in the snap election of November 2015 but then lose it again in 2018. Its electoral success has been mirrored in the three local elections held since the party's establishment, coming first in 2004, 2009 and 2014 respectively. The current party leader is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the incumbent President of Turkey.

İsmet Yılmaz is a Turkish politician. Previously he was Minister of National Defence and Minister of National Education. Also briefly served as the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly. Prior to entering politics, he worked as a law consultant and mechanical engineer.

The Republican People's Party is a Kemalist and social-democratic political party in Turkey. It is the oldest political party in the country, and is currently the main opposition in the Grand National Assembly. The CHP describes itself as "a modern social democratic party, which is faithful to the founding principles and values of the Republic of Turkey". The party is cited as "the founding party of modern Turkey". Its logo consists of the Six Arrows, which represent the foundational principles of Kemalism: republicanism, nationalism, statism, populism, laicism, and reformism.

Nomination Process

On June 22, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) announced that their nominee would be Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat from Mersin.^[2]

The Peoples' Democratic Party, or Democratic Party of the Peoples, is a pro-minority political party in Turkey. Generally left-wing, the party places a strong emphasis on participatory democracy, radical democracy, feminism, minority rights, youth rights and egalitarianism. It is an associate member of the Party of European Socialists (PES) and consultative member of the Socialist International.

Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat is a Kurdish politician who was one of the founders of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. He served as a Member of Parliament for the Grand National Assembly from 1999 to 2011 and again since 2015 as a member of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

Mersin is a large city and a port on the Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey. It is part of an interurban agglomeration – the Adana-Mersin Metropolitan Area – and lies on the western part of Çukurova, a geographical, economical, and cultural region. The city was named after the aromatic plant Myrsine in the family Primulaceae, a myrtle that grows in abundance in the area ; the 17th-century traveler Evliya Çelebi wrote that there was also a clan named Mersinoğulları

On June 24, Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu held a MYK meeting and then announced that their nominee would be their former leader and Antalya MP Deniz Baykal, who is currently serving as the interim speaker.^[3]

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is a Turkish social democratic politician. He is leader of the CHP and has been Leader of the Main Opposition in Turkey since 2010. He served as a Member of Parliament for İstanbul's second electoral district from 2002 to 2015 and as an MP for İzmir's second electoral district as of 7 June 2015.

Antalya is the eighth-most populous city in Turkey and the capital of its eponymous province. Located on Anatolia's southwest coast bordered by the Taurus Mountains, Antalya is the largest Turkish city on the Mediterranean coast with over one million people in its metropolitan area.

Deniz Baykal is a Turkish politician at the Republican People's Party (CHP) who served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1995 to 1996. Having served in numerous government positions, Baykal led the CHP from 1992 to February 1995, from September 1995 to 1999 and again from 2000 to 2010. Between 2002 and 2010, he also served as the Leader of the Opposition by virtue of leading the second largest party in Parliament.

On the same day, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) announced that their nominee would be Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu from Istanbul, who was the joint candidate of CHP and MHP for president in 2014.^[4]

The Nationalist Movement Party is a Turkish far-right conservative political party that adheres to Turkish ultranationalism and Euroscepticism.

Ekmeleddin Mehmet İhsanoğlu is a Turkish academic, politician and diplomat who was Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) from 2004 to 2014. He is also an author and editor of academic journals and advocate of intercultural dialogue.

Istanbul, formerly known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives in suburbs on the Asian side of the Bosporus. With a total population of around 15 million residents in its metropolitan area, Istanbul is one of the world's most populous cities, ranking as the world's fourth largest city proper and the largest European city. The city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Istanbul is viewed as a bridge between the East and West.

On June 26, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) announced that they would nominate İsmet Yılmaz, the Minister of National Defence.^[5]

Ministry of National Defence (Turkey) Turkish government ministry responsible for military and national defence affairs

The Ministry of National Defence is a government ministry office of the Republic of Turkey, responsible for coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government concerned directly with national security and the Turkish Armed Forces. It is headquartered at the Bakanlıklar in Ankara.

Conduct

The first two rounds were to be held on 30 June, while the final two were held on 1 July. The conditions required to win in the rounds were as follows:

Round 1: a two-thirds majority of 367 votes required to win
Round 2: a two-thirds majority of 367 votes required to win
Round 3: a simple majority of 276 votes required to win
Round 4: a simple majority required to win, with only the top two candidates that received the most votes in the third round contesting.

Acting speaker controversy

The speaker of the 24th Parliament, Cemil Çiçek, formally handed over his role to Deniz Baykal on 23 June 2015, since Baykal (At age 77) was the oldest member of the new parliament and was thus constitutionally entitled to act as temporary speaker until the new speaker was elected. Baykal was later also nominated as the CHP's candidate for speaker, which was controversial since his role as acting speaker allegedly barred him from campaigning of voting in the election. Amid speculation that Baykal could resign in order to focus on his election campaign, he issued a statement that there was no constitutional regulation that barred him from both continuing as acting speaker and campaigning for election, but would not vote for himself out of convention.^[6] He confirmed that he would also be presiding over the electoral proceedings as acting speaker.^[7]

The CHP also claimed that İsmet Yılmaz should have resigned from his position as Minister of National Defence during his election campaign.^[8]

Pre-election speculation

Since no party has a majority in the new 25th Parliament, this speaker election was the most unpredictable in decades. In the previous elections held under the AKP majority government era (2002-2015), parties such as the CHP did not usually put forward a candidate due to the certainty of the victory of the AKP's nominee. All four parties represented in parliament put forward a candidate in this election, leading to speculation over tactics and possible alliances during the voting process. There were also hopes that any alliances and cases of tactical voting in the election would possibly point to which parties would form the next coalition government.

Tactical voting attempts were likely to begin in the crucial third round, which determined the two candidates that will contest the fourth and final round. No candidate was expected to win in the first three rounds. There were rumours that up to 60 AKP MPs were planning to vote for the HDP candidate Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat in order to eliminate the CHP candidate Deniz Baykal, which would mean that the two candidates contesting the fourth round would have been the AKP and HDP candidate. Since the MHP were highly unlikely to vote for Fırat, this would have guaranteed Yılmaz's victory.^[9] However, such a situation did not materialise and all parties supported their own candidates in the third round. There was speculation that the opposition (the CHP, MHP and HDP) would all vote for Baykal.^[10] However, the MHP stated that they would not vote for Baykal if the HDP supported him. The MHP then announced that they would be casting invalid or blank votes in the final round, thereby effectively guaranteeing Yılmaz's victory.^[11] The MHP also called for the CHP to support their own candidate Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who was the CHP-MHP joint presidential candidate for the 2014 presidential election.

Results

Party		Candidate	Party MPs	June 30		July 1
Party		Candidate	Party MPs	Round 1 367 votes to win	Round 2 367 votes to win	Round 3 276 votes to win	Round 4 majority to win
	AKP	İsmet Yılmaz	258	256	256	259	Y258
	CHP	Deniz Baykal	132	125	128	129	182
	MHP	Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu	80	81	80	80	Eliminated
	HDP	Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat	80	81	80	78	Eliminated
Invalid				0	1	0	78
Blank				2	0	2	29
Turnout				545	545	548	547
Result				Inconclusive	Inconclusive	Inconclusive	Yılmaz elected

Aftermath

Temporary speaker Deniz Baykal formally handed over his role to İsmet Yılmaz shortly after the final round. HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş criticised the MHP's decision to cast blank votes in the final round, claiming that they had indirectly handed over the role of Speaker to the AKP. He also claimed that the result was an indication of an AKP-MHP coalition.^[12]

CHP spokesperson Haluk Koç criticised the MHP, stating that it had become evident who the 'seat supplier' was. This was a reference to MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli's criticism of CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's offer of the post of Prime Minister during coalition negotiations. Koç claimed that the MHP had positioned itself close to the AKP despite heavy criticism of the party during the general election campaign and wished the two parties well in their future relationship.^[13]

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References

External links

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[1] ttp://www.dailysabah.com/legislation/2015/07/01/ak-party-candidate-ismet-yilmaz-becomes-turkeys-new-parliament-speaker

[2] ttp://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/hdpnin-meclis-baskani-adayi-dengir-mir-mehmet-firat,7w2kxQ8HNku87FKhiDgGtQ

[3] ttp://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/chpnin-meclis-baskani-adayi-deniz-baykal,_oXnWlyHika01N2eeoCNZw

[4] ttp://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/mhpnin-meclis-baskani-adayi-belli-oldu,tRQirliohEGUEuOKuy3uhQ

[5] ttp://www.sozcu.com.tr/2015/gundem/akpnin-meclis-baskani-adayi-ismet-yilmaz-oldu-oldu-869317/

[6] ttp://t24.com.tr/haber/baykaldan-meclis-baskanligi-secimi-oncesi-aciklama,301187

[7] ttp://www.sozcu.com.tr/2015/gundem/deniz-baykaldan-istifa-aciklamasi-872408/

[8] ttp://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/29415936.asp

[9] ttp://www.internethaber.com/meclis-baskanligi-secimi-taktik-savaslari-797594h.htm

[10] ttp://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/29415936.asp

[11] ttp://www.dailysabah.com/legislation/2015/07/01/ak-party-candidate-ismet-yilmaz-becomes-turkeys-new-parliament-speaker

[12] ttp://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/selahattin-demirtastan-meclis-baskani-aciklamasi,3enI4ZFRP0ScwnxDgqpXvA

[13] ttp://www.mynet.com/haber/politika/haluk-koctan-flas-ismet-yilmaz-aciklamasi-1905555-1