Turkey court decides not to remove election threshold
The Constitutional Court, Turkey's highest court, has ruled against removing an election threshold that requires parties to secure 10 percent votes to gain representation in parliament.
ANKARA
Turkey's Constitutional Court has rejected appeals to remove a 10 percent election threshold which political parties in the country need to garner in order to win representation at the parliament.
The court Thursday rejected the appeals of three Turkish political parties, the Democratic Left Party, Great Union Party and the Felicity Party due to a "lack of subject-matter jurisdiction."
Appeals to the court can only be against practices and negligence of the legislation, not directly against the legislation, the court ruled.
Two members of the court's general board, Osman Alifeyyaz Paksut and Erdal Tercan, expressed opposing views.
The top court's decision came ahead of Turkey’s general elections in June.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party is one of the parties expected to come close to the 10 percent threshold in the June elections.
Under the current system, political parties in Turkey must have at least 10 percent of votes nationwide to gain parliamentary representation, the highest such threshold in Europe.
In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights had ruled that Turkey's election threshold did not violate the right to free elections and was not a violation of human rights, but it did add that it was "desirable" to lower it.
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