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Turkey votes for new parliamentary speaker

30 June 2015 19:43 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. No winner emerges in the first two rounds of election for parliamentary speaker, third round to be held Wednesday, APA reports quoting Anadolu Agency

The second round of voting for Turkey’s parliamentary speaker failed to produce a winner on Tuesday, with none of the four candidates securing the necessary two-thirds majority.

Deputies will reconvene on Wednesday for a third round of voting in which the winning candidate only needs a simple majority. If that fails to produce a winner, a fourth round between the two leading candidates from the previous round will be held.

The process to elect the speaker of the 25th Turkish Grand National Assembly began at 3.20 p.m. local time (1220 GMT) on Tuesday.

The voting among 550 deputies was conducted by secret ballot.

Ismet Yilmaz of the Justice and Development (AK) Party received 256 votes while the Republican People's Party’s (CHP) Deniz Baykal took 128 votes.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) received 80 votes each.

The voting widely reflected the outcome of the first round, although a handful of deputies did not vote in the second ballot.