The High Election Board annulled the applications by the 12 candidates, seven of whom were backed by the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), due to convictions which prevented them from running.
“We will discuss all the alternatives including not entering the election and withdrawing all the candidates,” BDP co-chairman Selahattin Demirtas told state-run Anatolian news agency late on Monday.
“This decision will go down in both legal and political history as a disaster,” he said.
The BDP was planning to enter all its 61 candidates in the June 12 election as independents as a way of overcoming a 10 percent threshold which parties need to exceed to enter parliament.
The BDP-backed candidates have convictions for links to outlawed Kurdish rebels.
The election board decision was criticized on Tuesday by the largest opposition CHP party and the speaker of parliament, who comes from the ruling AK Party.
“The place for the solution of even the most complex issues is parliament. Vetoing these candidates is not a decision that can be accepted by the democratic conscience. My wish is that the election board revises its decision,” Speaker Mehmet Ali Sahin told broadcaster NTV.
Election board chairman Ali Em said on Tuesday the decision by the board, which organizes and oversees elections, was clear and that he would not make a further statement.
The AK Party of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is widely expected to secure a third successive election victory in June.
The BDP’s support is centerd in the mainly Kurdish southeast of the country, scene of a separatist conflict between the state and militants from the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
More than 40,000 people have died in the fighting since the PKK took up arms in 1984.
