The following article documents the issues and developments that have formed the basis of the political campaigns and the news agenda in the run-up to the June 2015 general election and the November 2015 general election.
Civil liberties
The election was held at a time when Turkey's human rights record was facing increased domestic and international scrutiny, particularly from the European Union. The AKP's commitment to human rights has thus also come under doubt, with the governments of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ahmet Davutoğlu both presiding over controversial curbs on civil liberties since 2011. Following proposals to limit rights to protest after the Autumn 2014 Kurdish riots, critics accused the government of turning Turkey into a police state. A long-time ban against headscarves in the civil service was abolished in 2013.
A spate of anti-government demonstrations began in May 2013 and continued throughout the year, protesting against Erdoğan's alleged authoritarianism, police brutality, and media censorship. The government responded with what many critics called disproportionate force that claimed the lives of 22 people and injured over 8,000. Images of police using slingshots against protestors, the use of dangerous chemicals in water cannon spray and tear gas, as well as the involvement of many club-carrying AKP youth wing members assisting the police, drew particular outrage. Erdoğan responded by calling the protesters 'looters' and refused to resign as Prime Minister.
Beginning in 2013, critics accused media outlets of being under government control, and CHP claimed that the AKP were the 'biggest media boss in Turkey'. A CHP party report claimed that 1,863 journalists had been fired since the beginning of AKP rule. Turkey ranks first in the world in terms of imprisoned journalists, with 40 in prison according to the committee to Protect Journalists. A new Internet law passed in 2013 has also allowed the government to block websites without court order, which was implemented in March 2014 with the banning of both Twitter and YouTube.
In February 2015, a 13-year-old boy was arrested after allegedly criticizing President Erdoğan on Facebook. In March, a Patriotic Party youth leader was arrested for calling Erdoğan a dictator, with the prosecution requesting a prison sentence of one year and two months. Three more Twitter users were taken into custody for allegedly insulting the President and other senior government officials on 13 March.
Economy
Although Turkey boasted a period of strong economic growth after the 2008 financial crisis, several forecasts for the future have been downgraded due to political turmoil and a lack of structural reforms. Economists, as well as former AKP Prime Minister and President Abdullah Gül have stressed the need for Turkey to adopt a new economic model, potentially becoming an export-led economy. In early 2015, the official unemployment rate rose above 10% for the first time in years while youth unemployment rose above 20%. The economic downturn has been attributed to Turkey's over-reliance on foreign investment to sustain growth. 20% of Turks live below the poverty line while child poverty has risen to 63.5%. Furthermore, political uncertainty has resulted in sharp falls in the Istanbul stock exchange. Regardless, the AKP government have continued investment in major infrastructure, such as the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, the Ankara-Istanbul high-speed railway, the İzmit Bay Bridge currently under construction as well as the M5 metro line in Istanbul.
Pre-election giveaways have since included a government pledge to grant subsidies to first-time home buyers, contributing 15% of their savings to the purchase of their first home.
Foreign policy The three main parties contesting the election broadly associate themselves with significantly different outlooks on foreign policy. These are the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Pan-Islamist or Neo-Ottoman foreign policy of the AKP, the western-orientated foreign policy of national autonomy advocated by the CHP, the Kurdish nationalist foreign policy advocated by the HDP and the pan-Turkist policy of expansionism promoted by the MHP. As the architect of the AKP's foreign policy outlook while serving as Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu was initially praised for redefining Turkey's international role as a regional power. During the latter years of his tenure, he has been criticized for his policy failures regarding the Syrian Civil War and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
The elections came at a time when Turkey was increasingly isolated in the international sphere due to the AKP's insistence that Bashar al-Assad be as President of Syria before giving support to the United States during their airstrikes against ISIS. In the 2014 UN Security council elections, Turkey lost a seat to Spain, which was seen as a sign of global disapproval against the AKP's foreign policy. As a result, the opposition widely criticised the AKP's foreign policy, claiming that it had caused growing problems with neighbours as opposed to 'zero problems with neighbours' that Davutoğlu initially hoped to achieve as Foreign Minister.
Particular foreign policy conflicts between parties have centered on the issue of Israel and the European Union. Both the AKP and CHP blamed each other for being pro-Israel, with the former accusing the latter of being associated with 'pro-Israel' Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen. The CHP has accused the AKP of increasing their business relations with Israel despite their strong anti-Israeli rhetoric. While Davutoğlu claimed that EU membership was a strategic target for his government, stalled accession talks prompted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to declare that the EU 'should mind their own business' after they condemned the mass arrest of journalists in late 2014.
Government corruption scandal
The AKP's election campaign revolved around dismantling the 'parallel state' that it accuses Fethullah Gülen of using to incriminate the government in a 2013 corruption scandal. After parliament rejected an opposition-backed motion to send AKP former ministers Zafer Çağlayan, Muammer Güler, Egemen Bağış and Erdoğan Bayraktar to the Supreme Criminal Court (Turkish: Yüce Divan) on corruption charges on 21 January 2015, Ahmet Davutoğlu declared the scandal a coup attempt. Several AKP MPs, such as Hakan Şükür, İdris Bal and İdris Naim Şahin had resigned following the scandal and in some cases formed their own parties.
The corruption scandal emerged when incriminating phone recordings of ministers, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, were published on social media, prompting charges against six individuals for bugging the ministers' telephones. Although the recordings were identified as 'fakes' by the government, they failed to obtain any conclusive identification that proved the recordings to be fake. The CHP demanded the government's immediate resignation, though the then-Prime Minister Erdoğan refused to do so. The anti-corruption issue was strongly reflected in the CHP's local election campaign.
Kurdish peace process
Despite Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç claiming that AKP would not be so 'undignified' or 'dishonourable' to negotiate with terrorists in 2010, a peace process focusing on disarming the PKK separatists has been in place since December 2012 with the intention of ending a conflict ongoing since 1984. The government's negotiation with terrorists as well as the terms of the solution process has since come under heavy scrutiny. Since then, Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan claimed that the AKP are the owners of the solution process.
During the 2014 presidential election campaign, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) candidate Selahattin Demirtaş criticised the government for not complying with the terms of their own solution process. The peace process nearly dissolved during the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant rebels' siege of the city of Kobanî due to the breakout of Kurdish nationalist demonstrations in protest at the government's lack of response. The death toll was estimated at over 50 people, while three soldiers were killed by the PKK. The AKP government subsequently blamed the HDP for the violence, with Davutoğlu claiming that their actions would result in the HDP losing all influence throughout the process. The government has also set up a Solution Process Council as well as a 'Board of Wise People' to oversee the ongoing efforts. During the initial formation of the parliamentary solution process commission, the CHP and MHP both boycotted the parliamentary vote that allowed the commission to be set up.
As the main opposition party, the CHP supports the notion of a peace process with separatist rebels and has called for such a process to include projects to alleviate poverty in south-east Anatolia. Closer involvement by the CHP in the peace process has been supported by HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş, who claimed that the involvement of multiple parties in the process would increase transparency. In order to increase the party's appeal to Kurdish areas where the CHP has traditionally polled poorly, Kılıçdaroğlu began a new initiative named 'New CHP' (Yeni CHP or YCHP), which led to the opposition several nationalist MPs such as Emine Ülker Tarhan. On 29 November 2014, Kılıçdaroğlu made a speech in Diyarbakır and made a 12-point legislative proposal in regards to the solution process, which included motions to reduce the parliamentary threshold to 3%, clearing mines from land and assigning property rights to landless villagers, abolishing the village guard system and changing a new prison in Diyarbakır into a democracy museum.
In 2013, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) took several government officials, all 63 members of the 'Wise People Committee' and then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to court for acting unconstitutionally by negotiating with the PKK. However, in December 2014, the party agreed to support the process on the condition that the PKK unconditionally disarms. Journalists have speculated that the MHP manifesto would propose to end the solution process.
Criticisms of the solution process have mainly entered around the AKP's concessions to the PKK as well as the future of their currently imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan. Furthermore, the creation of PKK checkpoints around south-eastern cities by separatists as well as the lowering of a Turkish flag in Diyarbakır in 2014 has also caused concern that the south-east of Anatolia was effectively becoming an independent Kurdistan. Opposition journalists have alleged that the PKK have continued to attack soldiers and criticised the mainstream media for not reporting their deaths.
In March 2015, Erdoğan allegedly demanded that the government should suspend the peace process after noting that a significant portion of AKP voters were likely to defect to the MHP. The allegation comes at a time when relations between the government and president have become strained due to disagreements on the peace process. On 17 March, Erdoğan publicly denied that Turkey had a 'Kurdish problem'. In April, a military operation in Ağrı resulted in the death of 5 PKK militants, while 8 soldiers were injured and allegedly abandoned by the army after the operation. HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş accused the government of planning the operation to sabotage the peace process and win votes by intentionally letting soldiers die, adding that HDP supporters helped the 8 wounded soldiers to reach a hospital after army helicopters abandoned them. Erdoğan retaliated by strongly denying the claims.
Presidential system