The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) lost the majority to form a single party government with the June 7 general elections after 13 unremitting years in power. It does, however, still have the largest group in Parliament with 258 deputies, and its chairman, interim Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, continuing on official coalition talks amid the party organization having already finalized the report analyzing and identifying the reasons behind the party's election failure.
An expert group of academics and political analysts visited Turkey's 81 provinces and conducted interviews with local organizations and party supporters and submitted their report to the party leadership. According to the report, the selection of unsuitable deputy candidates was the most problematic area in the eyes of the local organizations. With some local party officials citing the selection of locally unsung candidates as the main reason for the decline in votes, others named that negligence during the candidate selection process caused electoral realignment. In some provinces, constituents complained about provincial chairmen and councils ignoring their demands and being unapproachable when they needed them.
In addition, losing supremacy in political discourse to other parties and the lack of impressive election promises were also pointed out as reasons behind the failure. Moreover, not making populist election promises like the opposition parties was cited by some voters as a reason for the loss of votes.
The discontinuation of AK Party Political Academy events was also pointed to as one of the reason of the AK Party's failure. AK Party Political Academy events, which offer access to the political education through wide-scale education programs, started a few years after the establishment of the party and more than 70,000 participants took part throughout the country.
The more than 300-page report identifies and details all the reasons for the party's loss of votes. The AK Party leadership is expected to thoroughly investigate the report and start to addresses the problems in the coming days.
AK Party sources said that about 25 provincial heads who were considered unsuccessful are expected to be dismissed from duty as a first step.
