The law governing elections is of great importance in determining the results or some of them in many countries, and Turkey is no exception. The results of the last elections in 2018 were directly affected by the electoral alliances law, and the amendment to the law passed last year is expected to have an impact on the course and outcome of the electoral process.
Hondt's Law
In parliamentary elections, Turkey adopts the Hundt system of proportional representation, which seeks to harmonize and balance the accuracy of representation with the stability of the parliament. This system, created by the Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt, is based on dividing the number of votes obtained by each political party in each electoral district by the numbers in an incremental manner, starting from the number one until the number of deputies to be elected in that district, and then distributing the seats of that district to the political parties by choosing the higher numbers that resulted from the division.
This relatively complex method, used in addition to Turkey by other countries, including several European countries, is added to the addition of an "electoral threshold" that political parties are required to cross to enter parliament. The theoretical goal of this threshold (or barrier) is to ensure the presence of large parliamentary blocs in parliament, which helps stability, but it was often used to prevent certain currents from entering parliament, especially after the 1980 coup, especially Islamist and Kurdish parties, as they serve large parties at the expense of small parties.
This threshold was 10% before it was amended last year to 7%, and before that, a previous amendment subjected electoral alliances, not just parties, to the same article. Thus, an electoral party or alliance that cannot obtain 7% of the votes throughout Turkey (the sum of the votes of Turks abroad) will not enter parliament, and the votes obtained are distributed among other parties/alliances according to the percentage of votes obtained in that electoral district (not the whole of Turkey).
After the adoption of the presidential system in the country, and in light of the need for the elected president to obtain more than 50% of the votes, and the inability of any of the parties to overcome them alone, the need for an alliance between the parties arose, and this was passed by law in 2018. As a result of this amendment, smaller parties became more important in the domestic political equation because larger parties needed them in elections.
In April last year, parliament passed a draft law to amend the electoral law submitted by the People's Alliance of Justice and Development and the Nationalist Movement, which included lowering the threshold from 10% to 7%, abolishing the existence of a parliamentary bloc from the conditions for parties' participation in elections, and calculating the winners of parliamentary seats according to the outcome of their parties – not the alliance as a whole – in each electoral district.
These amendments appear to have been motivated by lessons learned from previous elections, and lowering the electoral threshold has long been a demand for everyone. The Good Party "borrowed" 20 CHP parliamentarians to be eligible to enter the elections (they resigned from their party and joined the Good Party temporarily), while the ruling People's Alliance estimated that the method of calculating the outcome of the alliances harmed it and benefited the opposition alliance, while if the deputies of each party had calculated according to its own result, the alliance would have increased its number of deputies by 14 members (11 for the PJD, 3 for the MHP).
Repercussions
A direct reflection of the recent amendment to the electoral law on the basis of which the ballot will be held is that the importance of alliances in parliamentary elections is reduced from what it was in the past. In elections, the smaller party in any alliance had enough of a modest result to enter parliament, as the largest party - allied with it - guaranteed a good result for the alliance, and then divided the number of deputies won by the alliance among its constituent parties, but now the smaller party will gain seats in parliament only if its results allow it, which reduces the importance of alliances in this context.
However, this did not – and will not push – parties to asceticism in forming alliances, as they are of paramount importance in the presidential elections in the first place, and their usefulness in the parliamentary elections is still there, although it has declined, but it forces the allied parties to plan differently than before.
This is all the more important because there will be fierce competition between alliances regarding parliamentary elections, as the most prominent goal announced by the opposition People's Alliance/Nation is to return the country to a parliamentary system, which requires two-thirds of the seats in parliament to approve it or at least 60% to submit it to a popular referendum. On the other hand, although the elected president has broad powers under the current presidential system, he does not want the other coalition to obtain a majority of parliament, which could make his duties difficult or hinder some of his decisions.
For smaller or newly formed parties to have a high chance of entering parliament, existing alliances will need to circumvent the amended electoral law. This can happen by entering parliament with joint lists that include candidates from all the coalition parties so that the small parties do not present candidates in their name, or that there is coordination and support from the major parties so that they do not present candidates in constituencies where there is a reasonable opportunity for the smaller parties and direct their voters to vote for them, or to mix these and that, otherwise their participation alone would be a great adventure.
This is even more evident in the opposition People's Alliance, where the Republican People's Party, the largest party in the alliance, is expected to nominate a number of cadres of other smaller parties in the alliance (Happiness, Democratic, Future, Democracy and Progress) and possibly from outside the alliance on its lists. This does not prevent some of these parties from submitting their own lists, especially if they are in certain provinces and districts where they have a better presence and therefore better chances, and the Democracy and Progress Party has stated that it intends to do so.
Because the parties whose candidates can be put forward by the Republican People's People on their lists are many, and because this seems to be part of the understandings within the framework of the alliance, the matter may have repercussions on the map of the next parliament and the balances of parties within it and the number of their deputies in it, especially since the continuation of the six-party alliance after the elections is not certain or guaranteed.
Finally, it is important to note that the composition of the next parliament, especially in terms of majority and minority, depends on the number of deputies rather than the percentage of the parties' vote, which are not identical in most cases, and may be significantly different due to the electoral law and the electoral threshold specifically.
The failure of some parties to enter parliament will mean the distribution of their votes among others. According to the result obtained by these parties, and according to the order of the parties in those districts, the matter will be reflected on other parties, especially large ones, which means that one alliance will receive a higher percentage than another alliance does not suggest that it will necessarily get more deputies.
Therefore, precisely, it is difficult to say for sure the composition of the next parliament. While most estimates indicate that the opposition, consisting of the People's Alliance and the Peoples' Democratic Party, which did not join it, will obtain a simple majority in the next parliament, which we have previously suggested, this is not conclusive, and it may change if there are surprises with some other parties, especially in the provinces where the ruling coalition, specifically the Justice and Development Party, has a better presence. Therefore, we will return to the expectations of the election results in some detail in a forthcoming article, with God's help.