The Democratization Package and the Dilemma of ‘Stability vs. Fair Representation’

“Election systems” have recently become a hot topic in Turkish politics with the unveiling of the so-called “democratization package” by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sept. 30 in Ankara.
 
The package addresses a slew of long-standing issues with 28 points. One of the points concerns lowering the election threshold, which has been a burning question for years in Turkey. The package proposes lowering the election threshold from the current 10 percent to 5 percent with a district system or abolishing it with a single-member district system.
 
It will be helpful to take a look at the history of elections and the election systems that have been used since the late 19th century in Turkey.
 
The first parliamentary election in Turkey was held in 1877, after the adoption of the first Constitution of Turkey, Kânun-u Esâsî, on Dec. 23, 1876. According to Kânun-u Esâsî, every 50,000 male voters were to be represented by one deputy in the Meclis-i Mebusan, the Parliament. Furthermore, the deputies in İstanbul and neighboring regions were not to be elected directly by the voters themselves but by the representative bodies of electors in the relevant towns and provinces. With this first parliamentary election in Turkey's political history, the majority rule system became the main election system with little change until the 1961 parliamentary elections.
 
The parliamentary elections between 1923 and 1946, namely the 1923, 1927, 1931, 1935, 1939 and 1943 elections were also calculated under the majority rule system. However, this period deserves relatively less attention in this analysis, as the elections were nothing more than a formality due to the single-party rule of the Republican People's Party (CHP). Nonetheless, with the 1946 parliamentary elections, Turkey switched to a multi-party system with the formation of the Democrat Party (DP) on Jan. 7, 1946. During the 1946 parliamentary elections, the CHP secured 396 seats while the DP achieved 61 and independents took four seats in Parliament.
 
The 1946 elections have been highly criticized, since the elections were not under legal protection and the votes were cast publicly but counted in secret. However, this absurdity was changed before the 1950 parliamentary elections, and as a result the DP secured 408 seats while the CHP achieved only 69, the Nation Party (MP) one and the independents nine seats in Parliament. These results were also far from reflecting the reality of the electoral map in Turkey. In fact, the DP secured 53.3 percent of the votes but took 83.7 percent of representative power in Parliament with 408 seats. Likewise, the CHP secured 39.7 percent of the vote while taking a mere 14.4 percent of representative power with 61 seats, and the MP secured 3 percent of the votes but gained 0.2 percent of representative power with one seat in Parliament.
 
For this reason, the electoral system had much more impact than the voters on how Parliament was shaped. For instance, had the 1950 elections been held with the d'Hondt system, the DP would have taken only 270 and the CHP 210 seats in Parliament, which would have radically changed the balance of power in Parliament in particular and politics in general. It is obvious that the majority rule system does not truly reflect the principle of fair representation. As a result, the DP enjoyed a higher level of power than its actual electoral support whereas the CHP had to settle for a correspondingly lower level of power.
 
The majority rule system was abandoned with the adoption of the 1961 Constitution, and proportional representation became the main election system between 1961 and 1977, namely in the 1961, 1965, 1969, 1973 and 1977 parliamentary elections. This system had never been used in any elections until 1961 and the main question was, “Who will get how many?” in terms of parliamentary seats, as well as the launch of a quasi-d'Hondt system with an election threshold in order to avoid the formation of many small parties. This system paved the way for a very fragmented structure in governance. Therefore, in the 1961 elections none of the parties achieved the required majority to form a government by themselves, and this started the "era of coalitions" in Turkish politics.
 
The 1961 election results sparked a huge debate on the proportional representation system since it could not maintain the fairness of representation in Parliament, either. Thus, the system was modified before the 1965 elections with some changes that were relatively in favor of smaller parties. This move yielded surprising results in the 1965 elections, such as the Turkish Workers' Party (TİP) securing 15 seats in Parliament with 3 percent of the vote. TİP was the first communist party in Parliament, and their outstanding performance as an opposition party shook the political stage despite their few seats in Parliament. The TİP example is quite telling regarding the debate on whether to abolish the election threshold.
 
The removal of the election threshold will definitely lead to pluralistic representation in the political arena, considering that even with minor modifications, a very small party such as TİP managed to have a considerable say in politics in the past.
 
Backed by the authoritarian winds of the 1980 military coup, the 1982 Constitution brought about the 10 percent election threshold, prioritizing "stability" over "fair representation." The 10 percent election threshold does not exist in any other democratic country, and it must be lowered to a maximum level of 5 percent. Moreover, the package proposes lowering the threshold for government funding from 7 percent to 3 percent. Although this is a very positive step, that threshold should also be lowered below 3 percent in order to encourage political participation from different segments of society.
 
As a matter of fact, Turkish decision makers and political elites have always faced a choice between "stability" and "fair representation" in terms of election systems. At the end of the day, they have always opted for "stability" at the expense of "fair representation." In addition, election systems have never been discussed in normal circumstances, but rather in extraordinary political and social atmospheres. Hence, those discussions mirrored the wishes and preferences of the biggest and strongest parties as the election systems were decided after either a military coup or an election.
 
In conclusion, both the majority rule system and proportional representation system pose certain shortcomings in terms of fair representation in the political arena, and a high election threshold adds to these shortcomings. Instead of the two above-mentioned electoral systems, the district system proposed by the democratization package would be the best option to achieve fair representation in the political arena and promote the participation of different segments of society in politics. The long-lasting concerns over "stability" might be explained and partly legitimized by the misgivings of a "new Republic," but that Republic, considered to have come of age, demands a more confident approach to governance. Thus, it is time to opt for "fair representation," as it will also yield "stability."