Turkey Between Elections
By Cansu Colakoglu
On June 7, 2015, Turkey held general elections in which the governing Justice and Development Party, commonly known as the AKP, lost its outright majority in Parliament for the first time in 13 years. The electoral system in Turkey allocates 550 total seats. But the country also has the world’s highest election threshold, barring from the legislature any party that doesn’t register at least 10 percent of the popular vote. This unusually high election threshold is a legacy of a 1980 military coup and the consequent 1982 constitution. Kenan Evren, the general that orchestrated the takeover, is believed to have implemented this threshold to avoid political instability and inertia in the parliament. However, although this regulation was meant to promote efficiency in governance and lawmaking, it ended up leaving out minority voices—especially the Kurdish population—for decades after its implementation. The Kurdish minority’s recent success in finally crossing the election threshold has disrupted Turkish politics dominated by the AKP and resulted in the escalation of tensions between the AKP and its
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