(Yüksek Seçim Kurulu) oversees the distribution of parliamentary seats per
electoral district Turkey elects 600
Members of Parliament to the
Grand National Assembly using the
D'Hondt method, a
party-list proportional representation system. In order to return MPs to parliament, a party needs to gain more than 7% of the vote nationwide by itself or by being a member of an electoral alliance whose aggregate votes passes the said threshold. This means that parties may win the most votes in certain areas but not win any MPs due to a low result overall. The
parliamentary threshold, which stayed as high as 10% between 1982 and 2022, has been subject to intense scrutiny by opposition members, since all votes cast for parties polling under 10% are spoilt and allow the parties overcoming the national threshold to win more seats than correspond to their share of votes. E.g. in the
2002 general election the AK Party won 34.28% of the vote but won nearly
two-thirds of the seats. The parliamentary threshold does not apply to
independents, meaning that
Kurdish nationalist politicians who poll strongly in the south-east but are not able to win 10% of the overall vote stand as independents rather than as a party candidate. This was the case in the
2007 and
2011 general election, where the Kurdish
Democratic Society Party and the
Peace and Democracy Party fielded independent candidates respectively. Ahead of the
2018 general election, Electoral System was altered to accommodate for election alliances, allowing parties to enter elections as coalitions of multiple parties, where as long as the aggregate votes of the alliance passes the electoral threshold the threshold is ignored for the parties within the coalition, effectively opening a way for parties to bypass the electoral threshold. Effects of the change was first observed in the same elections, where
Good Party, despite its 9.96% votes laying below the then 10% threshold, was able to enter the parliament due to being part of the larger
Nation Alliance, whose total vote was 33.95%. While initially the D'Hondt method was applied proportionally to all alliance members, a bill overseeing alterations to the election law passed on 31 March 2022 changed the system so that each party that passes the new 7% threshold either by itself or by being a member of an electoral alliance are directly represented by its own votes in each constituency when the calculations of D'Hondt are being made, disallowing smaller members of an electoral alliance from gaining MPs in the strongholds of their larger allies' strongholds due to their overall percentage contribution to the alliance.
Proposals for reform The main criticism of the current system has long been the unusually high 10% threshold necessary to gain seats. In January 2015, the CHP renewed their parliamentary proposals to lower the threshold to 3% and proposed no changes to the proportional representation system, though the AK Party has been against lowering the threshold without wider electoral reform. In July 2013, the AK Party prepared new proposals, named the 'narrow district system'
(daraltılmış bölge sistemi), to change the proportional representation system into either a
first-past-the-post system or create smaller constituencies which elect a fewer number of MPs. Under these proposals, the threshold would fall from 10% to either 7 or 8% while Turkey would be split into 129 electoral districts rather than the existing 85.
Istanbul itself would have been split into 17 or 20 districts. The AKP's proposals for reform have raised concerns about
gerrymandering.
Changes in 2023 The number of MPs of those ten
electoral districts has been changed by the electoral council as listed below.
Changes in 2018 In 2018, total MPs are increased from 550 to 600. Due to this increase, several districts had more MPs. Ankara and Bursa divided into one more electoral district due to this increase. However, Bayburt is represented with one less MP in 2018, making it the only district with a single MP.
Changes since 2011 A total of eight
electoral districts had their number of MPs adjusted since the
2011 general election by the electoral council, as listed below. The
two electoral districts of Ankara also had their boundaries changed.
Votes required per MP by province The number of voters in each province was announced on 17 May 2015. In total, there are 53,741,838 voters in the provinces, which corresponds to 97,712 voters for each MP. However, because of the electoral system, this was not distributed equally to the provinces. In
İzmir, where voters per MP was the highest, 118,669 votes corresponded to an MP, whereas in
Bayburt, 27,089 voters were represented by an MP. Two factors caused this more than fourfold disparity. Namely, the electoral law favours provinces smaller in size, which caused
İzmir,
Istanbul and
Ankara, Turkey's largest cities and provinces, to have the least representation per voter. Secondly, the distribution of MPs to provinces was based not on the number of eligible voters, but on total population, which made each vote more valuable in provinces with a young population. For example, the
HDP stronghold
Hakkari with 154,705 voters got 3 MPs, whereas
Yalova with 166,060 voters got 2 MPs. Similarly,
Van, another
HDP stronghold with 596,809 voter got 8 MPs, whereas
Muğla, a
CHP stronghold with 665,608 voters got 6 MPs. In
Şanlıurfa where
AKP and
HDP are strong, there were 12 MPs per 974,219 voters, whereas in
Manisa, where
CHP and
MHP perform better than average, votes of 1,006,697 voters determined only 9 MPs.
Yusuf Halaçoğlu's bill which would partly mitigate this disparity was rejected in the parliament.
Parliamentary arithmetic In order to pursue constitutional changes, a party needs either a three-fifths majority or a two-thirds majority, which give the government different powers. These are documented in the table below (valid by 2018 elections). •
301 seats – Resist a vetoed law •
360 seats – Put proposed constitutional changes to a
referendum (three-fifths majority) •
400 seats – Change the constitution without needing a
referendum (
two-thirds majority) ==Local elections==