Turkey Votes: Your Guide to How the Electoral System Works

INTERPRETER

There are more than 64 million eligible voters in Turkey, including more than six million new voters.

More than 64 million people are eligible to vote in Turkey’s May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces the toughest test in 20 years.

There are more than six million new voters in the high-stakes elections, and the number of Turks abroad able to vote until May 9 passed 3.4 million.

Here’s everything you need to know about how the electoral system works:

What kind of political system does Turkey have?

• Turkey moved from a parliamentary to a presidential system in July 2018, one month after Erdogan won the presidential election.
• The powers of the president were expanded following a 2017 referendum approving the transition to an executive presidency.
• The post of prime minister was abolished and the president also became head of government.
• In the new system, voters directly elect the president.

How often are elections held?

• Turkey holds simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections every five years.
• The 2023 elections, originally scheduled for June 18, have been brought forward to May 14.

Who can become president?

• A potential candidate must be a Turkish citizen, at least 40 years old and have a bachelor’s degree.
• Candidates are nominated by parties that have received at least 5 percent of the vote in previous parliamentary polls or have 20 seats in parliament.
• A presidential candidate can also apply for a nomination by collecting 100,000 statements of support from citizens.

How does a presidential candidate win?

• A candidate needs more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round to win outright.
• If no one crosses the 50 percent mark, the top two candidates will face off in a runoff two weeks later, with this year’s vote on May 28.

How do parliamentary elections work?

• Elections to the 600 members of the National Assembly, as the Turkish parliament is called, are conducted through a system of proportional representation, so Turks vote for party lists rather than candidates and seat numbers correspond to votes cast by party rather than alliances .
• Its 600 members represent 87 constituencies in 81 counties.
• Constituencies are allocated parliamentary seats in proportion to their population.
• To get into parliament, a party must receive 7 percent of the vote, or be part of an alliance that does.
• Candidates must be at least 18 years old.
• To gain a parliamentary majority, a party or alliance must control more than half, or 301, of the seats.

The current parliament of Turkey

• Erdogan’s Adalet ve Kalkınma Party (Justice and Development, AK) has 285 seats.
• The AK Party’s ally, the far-right Milliyetçi Hareket Party (Nationalist Movement, MHP), has 48.
• The main opposition party, the center-left Cumhuriyet Halk Party (Republican People’s Party, CHP), has 134 MPs.
• The CHP’s centre-right ally, the Iyi Party (Good), has 36 lawmakers.
• The pro-Kurdish Halkların Demokratik Party (People’s Democratic Party, HDP) has 56 legislators.

What happened in 2022?

• In April 2022, the electoral threshold was lowered from 10 percent to 7 percent after a law was passed by parliament.
• The law changed the way seats are distributed among the parties that are members of an alliance.
• Parliament seats were previously allocated based on the total number of votes an alliance received. Now the seats are allocated based on the votes a party receives individually.
• Alliances are therefore deployed so that parties can cross the electoral threshold. This also pits parties within an alliance against each other.
• The AK party is part of the Cumhur İttifakı (People’s Alliance) whose parties fight the elections separately, while the CHP is part of the six-party Millet İttifakı (Nation Alliance).