Turks Vote as Ruling Party Seeks to Claw Back a Majority

Turks headed to the polls Sunday for the second time in five months in a crucial election that will determine whether the ruling party can restore the parliamentary majority it enjoyed for 13 years.
Turks Vote as Ruling Party Seeks to Claw Back a Majority
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan casts his vote at a polling station, in Istanbul, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015. AP Photo/Hussein Malla
The Associated Press
Updated:

ANKARA, Turkey—As Turkey faces its worst violence in years, tens of millions of voters cast ballots Sunday in a contest that will determine whether the ruling party can restore the parliamentary majority it had enjoyed for over a decade.

The vote is a rerun of a June election in which the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, surprisingly lost its one-party rule due to a strong showing by a Kurdish party. The key question Sunday is whether the ruling party gets enough seats for an outright majority in parliament or whether it will have to form a coalition in order to govern.

Renewed fighting between Turkey’s security forces and Kurdish rebels has left hundreds of people dead and shattered an already-fragile peace process. Two recent massive suicide bombings at pro-Kurdish gatherings that killed some 130 people, apparently carried out by an Islamic State group cell, have also increased tensions.

Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic State and, since it hosts more Syrian refugees than any other nation in the world, a crucial player in efforts to end the war in Syria and resolve Europe’s massive immigration crisis.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is calling on voters to choose stability and give AKP a new majority. Opposition parties hope to force Davutoglu into forming a coalition.

More than 54 million people are eligible to vote at more than 175,000 polling stations and turnout is expected to be high.