Turkey’s democracy has been always imperfect. But since 1950, elections were for the most part free and fair. The institutions of military-bureaucratic tutelage established over the three decades following the 1960 coup were chiefly designed to limit the impact of elections and the influence of elected governments. The 10% threshold introduced after the 1980 coup was the only major tutelary intervention into the electoral system and it was intended to concentrate politics in the central mainstream. Kemalist tutelage came to an end during the 2000s but this did not lead to democratic consolidation in Turkey. By 2011, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had established itself as the dominant force in Turkish politics. The party's and in particular its charismatic leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's efforts to consolidate their grip over Turkey's society and state institutions have pushed the country towards an increasingly illiberal, authoritarian path. But unlike the military guardians, the AKP and Erdogan still had to win elections; with stakes continually rising, losing became a non-option. This has had a direct and corrosive impact on the integrity of elections. With the electoral playing field heavily skewed towards the incumbent, a number of scholars have classified Turkey as a competitive authoritarian regime. Focusing on the general election of June 2015, which was effectively cancelled when the ruling party lost its parliamentary majority and repeated in November under drastically altered political circumstances, this paper looks at how competitive authoritarian regimes react when they face election losses and questions whether Turkey's new authoritarianism can still be labelled "competitive".