Turkey to reduce election threshold from 10 to 7 percent

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The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have agreed to lower the parliamentary election threshold from 10 percent to 7 percent, according to statements by both parties' leaders.

President and AKP Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday (August 29) that they had agreed with the MHP to reduce the threshold but were waiting for the final decision of their allies.

"About the threshold, what has become clear is 7 [percent] but we haven't received our MHP colleagues' final decision yet," he told reporters.

"The MHP leans towards 7. Whether it might be something below this is not clear. It can be discussed as well but for now, there is no such thing."

Releasing a written statement today, MHP Chair Devlet Bahçeli confirmed that the threshold will be reduced to 7 percent.

"The threshold decision of the People's Alliance has been registered as 7 percent. No further evaluation is needed," said Bahçeli.

A draft bill for the reduction of the threshold, as well as other amendments to the election law, is expected to be submitted to the parliament after the opening of the parliament on October 1.

According to reports in the media, the AKP and the MHP are also considering increasing the number of polling districts and thus reducing the number of MPs in a district before the next elections, which are scheduled for June 2023.

Getting around the threshold

The 10-percent threshold was introduced in 1983 by the military government that took over after the coup d'etat on September 12, 1980.

The rule has long been criticized for hindering democracy by preventing smaller parties from being represented in the parliament. Also, there were elections that parties missed the threshold by small margins, which caused millions of votes to be wasted.

In several elections, members of small parties competed as candidates of larger parties to get around the threshold and swithced to their original parties after elections.

The threshold had also served the function of keeping pro-Kurdish parties out of the parliament until the 2007 election where the Democratic Society Party (DTP) members competed as independent candidates and joined the party after being elected.

The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), a successor to the DTP, was able to surpass the threshold in June 2015, November 2015 and June 2018 elections. (KÖ/VK)