What is Turkey's new electoral alliance about?

The Turkish president approved a draft bill on late Thursday to change election law, paving the way for electoral alliances among political parties in elections.

Lawmakers passed the 26-article bill after a 10-hour session on March 13 as the opposition rejected the bill, saying it would cause problems in future elections.

Tensions turned into a brawl during the discussion in parliament on Tuesday night between the governing AK Party, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)—who jointly submitted the bill—and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The AK Party holds 316 seats in parliament, the CHP holds 131, the MHP holds 36 and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) holds 50. Members of the HDP, including two co-chairs, were detained over accusations of links having to the PKK. 

The PKK is a designated terror group by Turkey, the US, and the EU. The group has been fighting the Turkish state for more than 30 years, causing the deaths of more than 40,000 people, including civilians.

The newly established Good Party (IYI Party) has five MPs in parliament who defected from the MHP and the CHP.

AK Party and MHP co-operation

The two parties have been developing closer ties since the end of the peace process, against which the MHP was harshly opposed.

Following the June 7 elections in 2015, where the HDP passed the vote threshold for the first time in its history, the forming of a coalition was necessary for running the country, and the HDP was on the table. Both the AK Party and the MHP refused any coalitions with the HDP. MHP leader Devlet Bahceli was the first leader to call for a re-election.

Turkey's peace process with the PKK, which the Turkish government calls the "Resolution Process" and which was announced by Erdogan himself in early 2013, collapsed after the elections, when the PKK relaunched its armed campaign against Turkish security forces in July 2015.

These incidents led the MHP to approach the AK Party. In the November re-election of that year, the AK Party gained enough seats to form a government.

After a failed coup attempt by what Ankara has named the Fetullah Gulen Terrorist Organization (FETO) took place in July 2016, killing at least 250 people, the MHP provided the most support for the AK Party in its fight against FETO. That led the MHP to ally with the AK Party in the 2017 referendum, in which Turkish voters approved a package of constitutional changes, handing more executive powers and keeping more responsible of the president's activities. The change also allowed the president to retain ties to a political party.

A year later, the MHP and the AK Party took their co-operation to a higher level, in an electoral alliance.

But what really is the change for the electoral system that the AK Party and the MHP brought to parliament, and what are the crucial articles that led the discussions?

Electoral alliance

In Turkish political history, different parties supported a single candidate against opponents, just as the CHP and MHP supported Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu against Erdogan in the previous presidential election.

With the electoral change, alliances will have a legal base, with the name of the alliances appearing on the ballot box. They will have one name as their presidential candidate.

The parties must submit an application to form an alliance to the Supreme Election Council (YSK) within seven days after the election calendar is announced.

Threshold rules

There have not been any changes to the election threshold under the new system, as political parties need to secure at least 10 percent in elections to win seats in parliament. 

Now, only the total votes of the alliance need to pass the threshold for the parties to claim seats in parliament, meaning parties close to the threshold can secure seats when they form alliances.

With this article, political parties will have a better chance of getting into parliament once they create alliances with other parties with less votes.

The main opposition said the change would create an advantage for the AK Party and the MHP, giving them more seats in parliament, even if they don’t have enough votes. 

The MHP leader Bahceli to complain about the threshold, before entering an electoral alliance with the governing AK Party.

“The MHP is not worried about the 10 percent threshold. But the possibility of staying below the threshold puts pressure on society. There are people who think this is better [for Turkey]. But 10 percent is too high for Turkey,” Bahceli told a group of reporters on November 7.

Most debated articles

There are two new measures over which the most heated debates took place: security forces will be allowed into polling stations if they are invited by officials or by a voter, and that the law will grant Turkey's Supreme Election Council the authority to merge electoral districts and move ballot boxes to other districts.

The government said that the measures were taken to prevent the possible PKK threats against voters in mainly Kurdish-populated southeastern Turkey.

According to the CHP, however, the measures will create less transparency in the vote counting process and will allow the government to move ballot boxes from opposition strongholds.

The HDP shares the same sentiment as the CHP, criticising the government.

Ballots that aren’t stamped by the ballot box officials on election day will still be admissible. 

That practice was applied in the latest referendum last April, caused widespread debate. Political parties within the opposition claimed that fake ballots without stamps were put in the boxes to change the results.

The ballot boxes officials’ stamp next to local electoral board’s stamp is a further security measure against fake ballots. But some of these officials “inadvertently” do not seal the ballots on occasions. 

By the new amendment, if any of local officials of political parties do not allege the ballots are fake or the ballots have not been provided by officials, those ballots which were “inadvertently” not sealed will be seen as valid by the Supreme Election Council.

So, a ballot that has the watermark and the emblem of the Republic of Turkey Supreme Election Council, and the stamp of the general electoral board, will be valid.

Other changes include the age requirement for candidacy, which was reduced to 18 from 21 for local elections.

On January 8, MHP leader Bahceli announced that his party would support the President and AK Party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the 2019 presidential election, instead of presenting a candidate of its own.

Parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled to take place in November 2019 after local elections, which are scheduled for March 2019.