What sort of parliament awaits Turkey after the election?
Even slightly disparate results in Turkey’s June 7 election could take the country in different directions.
Much has been written about the June 7 election in Turkey. Some of the best analyses on the election’s various dimensions appeared here on Al-Monitor, helped by more comprehensive reports elsewhere.
Semih Idiz discussed whether the course of Turkish foreign policy could change after June 7. Pinar Tremblay inquired why the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is running a negative campaign and losing support from Kurdish voters. Amberin Zaman wrote about how President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dreams of creating a “Turkish-style presidency” could flounder. Mustafa Akyol discussed the AKP and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s heavy use of religious symbolism to hedge their bets. Cengiz Candar commented on the violence directed against the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is succeeding in attracting votes from outside of its traditionally Kurdish base. And Kadri Gursel covered the disturbing but real possibility of electoral fraud and what civil society groups in Turkey are doing about it.
But how will the actual result of the election on June 7 affect seat configurations at the 25th Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) that will serve through 2019?
To grant Erdogan’s wish to create a “Putin-style presidency” for its former chairman, the AKP must garner at least 330 of the 550 seats at the TBMM to amend the constitution through a popular referendum. To pass its amendments directly, the ruling party needs a two-thirds majority of 367 deputies — a number it could not reach on its own. Under the Turkish Constitution, a political party needs at least 276 seats in parliament to form a single-party Cabinet without a coalition partner.
