Turkey revises election law in risky bid to block breakaway conservatives
Lowering the election threshold could boost the ruling coalition’s number of parliamentary seats, but there's no guarantee.
ISTANBUL — Turkey has amended its electoral threshold law, reducing the proportion of nationwide votes a party needs to enter parliament from 10% to 7%. The change is widely seen as an effort to divide the opposition.
The 10% threshold — the highest in the world — was introduced by generals after a 1980 coup, purportedly to put an end to the political turmoil and violence of the 1970s. It required a party to achieve at least 10% of all votes across the country to enter parliament and was generally seen as a bid to stop Kurdish and leftist parties from gaining representation.
