Originally scheduled for 27 October 2019, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called snap elections on 18 April after months of speculation.

The results of the November 2015 elections allowed the AKP to form a single-party government under its leader Ahmet Davutoğlu, but not to change the constitution or call a referendum, which would have required two-thirds or three-fifths majorities, respectively.

As such, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was left nominally unable to trigger a switch from a parliamentary to a presidential system, as his AKP had campaigned for ahead of the elections.

Additionally, he faced opposition on the matter from Prime Minister Davutoğlu, who allegedly held reservations over a change in form of government.

Military jets were reportedly spotted flying over Ankara just before 23:00 EEST (UTC+3), while both the Fatih Sultan Mehmet and Bosphorus bridges in Istanbul were closed by the armed forces.

In a televised address on the TRT station, the coup plotters, who referred to themselves as the Peace at Home Council (Turkish: Yurtta Sulh Konseyi), claimed that "The government ... [had] been dismissed from office".

[3] By the morning of 16 July 2016, the situation had reportedly been brought under control, while the Turkish government accused the Gülen movement of having orchestrated the putsch, and vowed to purge state institutions of its members.

[5] The 600 members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey will be elected by party-list proportional representation in 87 electoral districts, by the D'Hondt method.

This was widely speculated to be a result of the MHP's low poll ratings, which made it seemingly impossible to surpass the 10% threshold and win seats in future elections.

As a result, most electoral districts saw an increase in their number of seats in comparison to distribution at the November 2015 general election.

This essentially meant that the election in Bayburt, the only province-wide electoral district to lose seats following the re-distribution, will be conducted by first-past-the-post.

[8] The MHP had previously announced that it would support Erdoğan's re-election and was open to contest future elections under the AK Party banner, which was largely seen as the main reason for the electoral alliances law to be passed in the first place.

However, the Alliance crucially removed the 10% threshold condition for the Felicity Party, which had at the previous election won 0.68% of the vote.

The main reason for the HDP's exclusion was seen to be their unclear association with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist organisation.

The convention became known for its poor organisation and irregularities during the candidate nomination process, with İnce subsequently alleging foul play in the ensuring election.

[13] The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) held its 3rd ordinary congress on 11 February 2018 to elect both a chairman and a chairwoman.

The dispute resulted in the MHP executive winning the legal battle, allegedly with the covert help of the Ministry of Justice, with most of the dissidents subsequently being expelled.

[17] The Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) initially announced that it did not know whether İyi could participate, as the Court of Cassation was responsible for analysing the eligible parties.

[18] However, the YSK refused to ratify the announcement, causing accusations by the opposition that the government was trying to prevent İyi from running.

[20] The table below shows the 8 of the 11 eligible parties that submitted candidate lists to the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) before the 21 May 17:00 deadline, thereby contesting the election.

All this in order to ensure HDP would fail below the 10% quorum, which would greatly help AK Party and prevent a repeat of the "7 june experience".

[45][46] On 14 June, 4 to 5 people were killed in Suruc, a predominantly Turkish-Kurds town, following AK Party touring of the local market.