General elections were held in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

on Sunday, 18 April 1999. For the first time, local, council and parliamentary elections were held on the same day.

Bülent Ecevit Mustafa Bülent Ecevit (; 28 May 1925 – 5 November 2006) was a Turkish politician, statesman, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist, who served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002. He served as prime minister in ...

's Democratic Left Party (DSP) had been soaring in popularity after the capture of Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) leader

Abdullah Öcalan Abdullah Öcalan ( ; ; born 4 April 1949), also known as Apo (short for Abdullah in Turkish and Kurdish for "uncle"), is a political prisoner and founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Öcalan was based in Syria from ...

, emerged as the biggest party and swept the board in most of Turkey's western provinces. It failed, however, to obtain an overall majority, and did not do nearly as well in the eastern provinces. The second largest party (dubbed "the second winner" by the press the following day) became the

Nationalist Movement Party The Nationalist Movement Party (alternatively translated as Nationalist Action Party; tr, Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) is a Turkish far-right and ultranationalist political party. The group is often described as neo-fascist, and has been ...

(MHP), which performed strongly nationwide, producing MPs from nearly all of the country's 81 provinces. The largest party of the last election, the

Virtue Party Virtue Party ( tr, Fazilet Partisi, FP) was an Islamist political party established on 17 December 1997 in Turkey. It was found unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court and then banned on 22 June 2001 for violating the secularist articles of ...

(FP), returned to opposition after shedding forty-seven seats and a million votes. The decline of the

Republican People's Party The Republican People's Party ( tr, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, , acronymized as CHP ) is a Kemalist and social-democratic political party in Turkey which currently stands as the main opposition party. It is also the oldest political party ...

continued; this was the first time the party failed to exceed the 10 percent threshold for parliamentary representation. This was the last election which produced a

hung parliament A hung parliament is a term used in legislatures primarily under the Westminster system to describe a situation in which no single political party or pre-existing coalition (also known as an alliance or bloc) has an absolute majority of legisl ...

until the June 2015 general election.

Results

Aftermath

Bülent Ecevit formed the country's latest coalition government, against the FP, with the second-placed MHP and the fourth-placed Motherland Party (ANAP) as a junior partner. The DYP was consulted during coalition negotiations, but ended up in opposition. The DSP–MHP–ANAP coalition turned out to be one of the most stable in many years, surviving without change until Ecevit's hospitalisation and subsequent refusal to resign in 2002 prompted a wave of resignations from the DSP and early general elections.

References

{{Turkish elections General elections in Turkey

General A general officer is an Officer (armed forces), officer of highest military ranks, high rank in the army, armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers t ...

April 1999 events in Turkey