More than 53.7 million voters head to the polls on June 7 for a crucial parliamentary election in Turkey. The ruling AKP has lost its single party majority as the Kurdish problem-focused HDP passed the election threshold.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has framed the June 7 election in Turkey as a key hurdle on the path to the powerful presidential system that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to introduce.

With about 99 percent of the vote counted and despite being well ahead of other parties with the support of around 42 percent of the populace, the AKP seemed set to received fewer than 276 seats – the bare minimum to keep its parliamentary majority.

The Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), on the other hand, has crossed the 10 percent election threshold and decreased the number of AKP lawmakers considerably.

The HDP had faced scores of physical attacks during its campaign. One of its campaign bus drivers, Hamdullah Öğe, was murdered on June 3, and three of its supporters were killed when twin bomb blasts hit its milestone rally in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on June 5.

Election safety has also been a hot item on the agenda during the campaign ahead of the vote, amid the opposition’s claims that there was fraud in the vote counting process. The government has strictly denied the claim and mobilized a total of 404,000 security personnel to maintain security throughout the day of the election.