1999 Turkish general election
General elections were held in Turkey on Sunday, 18 April 1999. For the first time, local elections|local], council and parliamentary elections were held on the same day. Bülent Ecevit's Democratic [Left Party (Turkey)|Democratic Left Party] had been soaring in popularity after the capture of Kurdistan Worker's Party leader Abdullah Öcalan, emerged as the biggest party and swept the board in most of Turkey's western provinces. It failed, however, to obtain an overall majority, and did not do nearly as well in the eastern provinces.
The second largest party became the Nationalist Movement Party, which performed strongly nationwide, producing MPs from nearly all of the country's 81 provinces. The largest party of the last election, the Virtue Party, returned to opposition after shedding forty-seven seats and a million votes. The decline of the Republican People's Party continued; this was the first and the only time in the history of the republic when the party failed to cross the 10 percent threshold for parliamentary representation. This was the last election which produced a hung parliament until the June 2015 general election.