The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) announced ‎on Tuesday evening its list of candidates for the upcoming June 7 general elections. The new list has excluded 70 current deputies as the party's bylaws do not allow its members to serve more than three consecutive terms in Parliament. AK Party Deputy Chairman Mustafa Şentop said that 99 out of the 550 AK Party candidates are female party members.

Fatma Benli, Dr. Leyla Şahin Usta and Ravza Kavakçı Kan, who were all victims of the February 28 postmodern coup, are among the most prominent figures on the AK Party's candidates list. It has taken Turkey many years to recover from the political and economic impact of the postmodern coup, in which the army and media came together to force the government to resign by issuing a military memorandum on February 28, 1997.

Benli, who is a lawyer and women's rights activist, has been listed as a candidate for Istanbul. Benli was included on Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding's list of the world's 500 most influential Muslims. She was suspended from her studies at Marmara University in Istanbul when the government began enforcing a ban on headscarves in public institutions following the postmodern coup.

Along with Benli, Usta, who is also known in the Turkish media for having been a victim of the February 28 coup, is listed as a candidate for Konya, where she will run along with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. In 2004, Şahin was the first woman to bring a case against Turkey to the European Court of Human Rights concerning the previous law that banned the wearing of headscarves at universities and other educational and state institutions. As a fifth-year medical student at the faculty of medicine at Istanbul University during the February 28 coup, Şahin brought a suit against Turkey for upholding the decision of the university to prohibit her from taking exams or attending lectures while wearing a headscarf. The university also later suspended her and sent her to a disciplinary hearing at the university. Şahin then went to Austria to complete her medical studies.

Kan, who has been announced as a candidate from the first region in Istanbul, is the sister of Merve Kavakçı, Turkey's first headscarf-wearing deputy who was forcefully removed from Parliament in 1999 during her inauguration for wearing a headscarf in Parliament. Kavakçı currently lectures at Hasan Kalyoncu University in Istanbul focusing on U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern studies and Turkey-EU relations.

The February 28 coup against Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's Islamist Welfare Party (RP) government took place in 1997, two years after the RP came to power. The rift between the government and the army, which saw itself as the defender of secularism, widened and evolved into an all-out conflict between secular circles and the government.

On February 28, 1997, the National Security Council convened and called on the government to comply with laws ensuring the secular nature of the state. This was followed by a lawsuit against the RP in which Chief Prosecutor Vural Savaş demanded the closure of the party. In the face of these developments, Erbakan resigned from his post in June 1997.