The Candidacy Process The Parliamentary Elections of November 1st was one in which here was relatively more diversity in terms of both pre-candidates and the candidates nominated by political parties. Just like in all elections, many women and disabled persons made applications to political parties to be nominated as a candidate. Different from the earlier elections, many citizens from different ethnic and religious backgrounds also applied as precandidates. In addition, individuals with different gender identities also applied as pre-candidates. In the elections of June 7th, for the first time in the history of Turkey, a Roma individual, two Yezidi individuals and one Mhallami individual were shown as candidates by their political parties in constituencies where they had a chance of being elected and were thus able to enter the parliament as deputies. Similarly, after an interval of 54 years, three Armenian candidates were elected as deputies from three political parties and entered the parliament. 16 political parties took part in the elections of November 1st with total of 8426 candidates. Of the total number of candidates, 6429 were men and 1997 were women. A total of 2200 candidates ran in the elections from the four political parties represented in Parliament. Of these, 1690 were men and 510 were women. GENDER DISTRIBUTION OF PARTY CANDIDATES REPRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT 600 479 472 500 423 400 316 300 200 234 127 78 100 71 0 CHP MHP KADIN HDP AKP ERKEK 81 of the women who ran in the elections as candidates were elected. The November 1st elections produced fewer women deputies compared to the elections on June 7th. As a country where more than half the voters are women, Turkey is still far from gender equality standards in terms of women’s representation in the parliament. None of the LGBTI pre-candidates were enlisted in a ranking that gave them a chance of being elected. There were numerous disabled citizens applying to political parties to be a candidate. However the parties only enlisted five disabled candidates in rankings where they had a chance of being elected. Three of these candidates were elected and entered parliament. During the electioneering period, discrimination based on ethnicity, gender identity or religion as well as hate speech was used intensely by both the media and the political parties. We were not able to access any information as to whether investigations have been launched by prosecutors regarding discrimination and hate speech.