How Turkey’s election bill could backfire on Erdogan’s ruling party
An upcoming change to Turkey's election law could boomerang and hurt Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party.
Turkey’s ruling party and its de facto coalition partner revealed a long-awaited draft amendment to the country’s election law March 14. The bill is expected to become law in April with the alliance’s majority vote. According to Turkey’s constitution, electoral changes must come into effect at least one year before elections, meaning that it's too late for the bill to affect any snap elections before the general and presidential elections scheduled for 2023.
Erdogan has been talking about an overhaul in the election law since last year, promising “a very different” electoral system. A senior bureaucrat working for the Ministry of Interior told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “Experts studied this bill over a year and there were different proposals, simulations run. They picked this version.”
