Security forces are one of the main targets of political violence. This article examines the effect of their casualties on electoral outcomes. Between two general elections in 2015, Turkey experienced a series of attacks that killed 153 members of its security forces. Based on the as-if random assignment of their funerals across the country, I estimate that government vote share increases in the funeral places of security force terror victims. However, in the localities with recurring funerals, it decreases by a similar percentage.
Following the failure of the parties to form a government based on the June 7 elections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared on 24 August 2015 that the general elections were to be repeated. With the 1 November 2015 elections—the first repeat elections in the history of the Republic of Turkey—the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) has regained its parliamentary majority and guaranteed to rule the country for four more years.
The election of the 12th President of Turkey was remarkably different than the elections of the previous 11. For the first time in the history of the Republic, the head of the state was directly elected by ordinary people rather than chosen by their representatives in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. On 10 August 2014, the incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a simple majority of votes in the first round of the election and became the president for the next five years.