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bne June 2018 Southeast Europe I 35
especially in the southeast of the country, in those districts that are closer to Iraq and Syria than Ankara and Istanbul.
This will be one of the most important battlegrounds in the parliamentary
Turkey, which next month will elect 12 members to the 600-seat parliament.
At the last election the HDP won nearly three quarters (71%) of all votes cast, a clear landslide. The AKP was its closest
It would exclude a major political force representing Turkey’s largest ethnic minority from parliament.
But it would also gift 79 seats directly to the AKP, the only other competitive party in the region, at a time when an opposi- tion alliance is directly challenging its dominance in the west of the country.
There is talk of an informal pact between the HDP and the opposition’s alliance, where other parties will put up only symbolic candidates and implicitly encourage tactical voting against the AKP in the southeast.
But such a deal would still pit the HDP against other opposition parties in more westerly cities – Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana included – where they won votes and seats aplenty last time.
In short, this is the riskiest election yet for Turkey’s Kurdish party. Falling short of the threshold by even a few thousand
“Nearly all of HDP’s 59 members of parliament have been arrested, charged or sentenced to lengthy prison terms”
election, which takes place alongside the presidential one on June 24.
Last week four Turkish opposition parties decided to work together in their efforts to unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party by forming an electoral alliance. The decision was an unprecedented attempt to overcome their notorious divisions – but it was also incomplete because the HDP was excluded.
This is an electoral force for richer, more populous provinces in western Turkey. None in the new opposition alliance are likely to make much of a showing in the southeast.
In the 14 provinces that make up this part of Turkey, the election will be a two- horse race between the political left, rep- resented by the HDP, and the social con- servatism of the AKP. Both can appeal to vast numbers of Kurdish voters.
But this will not be a straight contest because of a serial gremlin in election rules: the threshold.
The law says that any party hoping to elect MPs to parliament must first secure 10 percent of valid votes cast nationwide (unless they are in a registered formal alliance with more successful parties on the ticket). Thresholds are a commonly- used tool to discourage fragmentation and keep broad alliances together, but Turkey’s is one of the highest in the world and benefits big parties at the expense of the small.
Take Diyarbakır, the large and over- whelmingly Kurdish city in southeast
challenger on 22%. Other parties com- peted, but none scored more than
a single percentage point.
Turkey’s proportional system meant the AKP was given two seats in the city while the HDP took the rest.
But if the Kurdish party had failed to cross the national vote threshold at the
“There is talk of an informal pact between the HDP and the opposition’s alliance”
last election, all of the seats would have gone to the AKP.
The concern this time is that the HDP’s hardships could lead to it falling just short of the 10% threshold.
votes could allow Erdogan to retain the parliamentary majority he seeks.
JamesInTurkey.com is a Turkish political analysis website run by the journalist Michael Sercan Daventry.
The threshold's danger
Fourteen provinces where only two parties have a chance of winning MPs
There are only 14 provinces where someone other than the ruling AKP can win seats in the upcoming general election.
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