General elections were held in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

in 1931.Myron E. Weiner, Ergun Özbudun (1987) ''Competitive Elections in Developing Countries'', Duke University Press, p337 The Republican People's Party was the only party in the country at the time, as the Liberal Republican Party that had been set up the previous year had already been dissolved. Voter turnout was reported to be 88%.Weiner & Özbudun, p340

Background

Candidates were nominated by the Council of the Presidency of the CHP. Unlike in previous elections, candidates were sought from across the country and a total of 1,176 nominations for the 287 candidates.

Electoral system

The elections were held under the Ottoman electoral law passed in 1908, which provided for a two-stage process. In the first stage, voters elected secondary electors (one for the first 750 voters in a constituency, then one for every additional 500 voters). In the second stage the secondary electors elected the members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly.Weiner & Özbudun, p334 Although the country was a

one-party state A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system, or single-party system is a type of sovereign state in which only one political party has the right to form the government, usually based on the existing constitution. All other parties ...

at the time, thirty seats were set aside for independents. Independent candidates were required to be "republican, nationalist and sincere."

References

{{Turkish elections, state=expanded

1931 Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir I ...

1931 elections in Turkey One-party elections