In the recent years, the rulership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his political party AKP have triggered several international debates due to the graduate decline of democracy in the country. The thesis aimed to resolve the question of whether the ruling party AKP used electoral engineering in the period from 2002 to 2018 with the intent to limit Kurdish representation. A further aim of this thesis was to determine whether electoral engineering has consequently had a negative impact on democracy in the country. The analysis of primary and secondary literary sources first presents the history of Turkey, focusing on its political events from 1923 to 2002. The issues of the unsolved Kurdish question, along with the emergence of the PKK, the political role of the army, and their relationship are presented chronologically. Today, the unresolved Kurdish question, the existence of the PKK, and the great political power exercised by the military still present historical, political, social, and cultural challenges in the country, therefore raising several new questions. Although the AKP had a serious intent to resolve the Kurdish question, we conclude that, due to the unpredictable political occurrences in the period 2011–2017, which consequently endangered party’s political continuity, the AKP did use electoral engineering. The use of electoral engineering has helped limit Kurdish representation, consequently undermining democracy in the country.
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