Turkish general election, 2002
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Total of 550 seats of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey 276 seats were needed for a majority |
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| Turnout | 79.14% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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304The 15th Turkish general election was held on 3 November 2002 following the collapse of the DSP-MHP-ANAP coalition led by Bülent Ecevit. It was the 15th general election to be held in Turkey. All 550 members of the Grand National Assembly were up for election.
The election was held during an ongoing economic crisis which followed the 2001 financial crash, which resulted in a deep resentment of coalition governments which had governed the country since the 1980 military coup. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had only been formed in 2001 by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, won the election with nearly two-thirds of the seats. The protest vote was such that every sitting party previously represented in parliament was ejected, with the AKP winning 363 seats with just 34.3% of the vote. The only other party which passed the 10% threshold to gain representation was the Republican People's Party, which came second with 19.38% of the vote and 178 seats. The election produced Turkey's first single party government since 1987 and the country's first two-party parliament since 1960.
The moderate Islamism advocated by the AKP was at odds with the secular establishment of the Republic of Turkey. While serving as the Mayor of Istanbul, Erdoğan was sentenced to a 10 month prison term in 1998 for reciting a poem in Siirt which incited racial intolerance. This barred him from initially seeking a seat in parliament, meaning that the AKP's co-founder Abdullah Gül became Prime Minister following their election victory. With the help of the CHP, the government overturned Erdoğan's political ban in 2003, after which he was able to seek a seat in a controversial by-election in the Province of Siirt. Erdoğan became Prime Minister in March 2003, with Abdullah Gül concurrently assuming the role of Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.
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