The Presidential Election in Turkey: History and Future Expectations

On 20. January 2012, the Parliament of the Republic of Turkey passed a law concerning new rules and procedure by which Turkey’s future head of state would be elected. According to this law, Turkey’s next head of state was to be elected by popular vote, in lieu of the Parliament, for the first time since Republican Turkey was founded. Based on the official election results, the former Prime Minister and head of the ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected in the first round as the 12th President of the Republic of Turkey for a period of five years, wining more than 52% of the votes on 10. August 2014. The other two candidates were Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Selahattin Demirtaş, who received 38.44% and 9.76% of the votes respectively.

Ahmet Erdi Öztürk

Ahmet Erdi Öztürk


Ahmet Erdi Öztürk is a Research Fellow at the Turkey Institute, a London-based centre for research, analysis and discussion on Turkey. He holds two master degrees from Hacettepe University and the Barcelona Autonoma University. Currently, Öztürk is a Balkan Studies PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana. His research interests include modern Turkish political life, state and civil society relations, Islam and politics, and protest movements.


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Contemporary
Southeastern Europe

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