The Decline of Independent Candidates in the Turkish Parliamentary Elections: The Roles of Electoral Alliances and Presidentialism

Independent candidates are central to democratic pluralism. Since its transition to a multi-party system in 1950, independent candidates in Türkiye have won parliamentary seats in half of all elections. Nevertheless, since 2015, independent candidates have not been able to win seats in the Turkish Parliament, which has raised the question of whether this is the end of independents. This paper aims to analyze the reasons behind this rapid reduction and argues that in addition to the changes in the political representation of the Kurdish movement, two main recent factors— the transition to presidentialism and the emergence of pre-electoral alliances in 2018¬ caused this decline. This points a worth investigating relationship between independent parliamentary candidacy, regime/ system change, electoral alliances, and party systems. Although in the Turkish context, independents were not mainly non-partisan candidates, the personal characteristics of the candidates also matter in voting. This study uses a historical institutionalism approach based on empirical analysis to show that in addition to the legal terms favoring their competition, institutional factors play a significant role, and independents are more likely to enter parliament in periods with a dominant party, reduced uncertainty, high national electoral thresholds for parties, greater party system fragmentation, and lower voter turnout.