04.2005 - Source: UK Home Office

General Election 2002 ("Country Report - April 2005") [#31987],  [ID 13154]

"[...]4.31 An article in The Financial Times published 5 November 2002 outlined the results of the general election of 3 November 2002.
[...]4.32 The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) found in their report on the Turkish elections, published 4 December 2002 that “The election campaign was short but active. Parties campaigned in a calm and peaceful atmosphere. Although there were a substantial number of cases of harassment reported by some political parties and by human rights groups, there was a general consensus that the situation had improved markedly compared to previous elections.” [14] (p2) [...]"

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12.2003 - Source: Journal of the International Institute

The parliamentary elections in November 2002 ("Plebiscite in the Midst of Hunger: Portrayals from the Last Turkish Elections") [#18426],  [ID 13226]

"The elections on November 3 resulted in the sweeping victory of the Justice and Development Party (JDP), founded just 14 months earlier. The party succeeded in attracting 34.3 percent of the total vote, an unprecedented accomplishment in Turkey for the last 15 years. The runner-up was the Republican People’s Party (RPP) with 19.4 percent. These were the only parties that gained seats in the parliament out of a total of 18 contenders. The rest of the parties failed to pass the 10 percent threshold to be eligible to gain parliamentary seats. A remnant of the military coup of 1980 that suspended the electoral democracy and brutalized the country for three years erected this threshold to ensure the system’s stability by preventing marginal parties from entering parliament. Currently, the threshold serves to prevent the non-separatist Kurdish party, too dangerous in the eyes of the military-bureaucratic establishment, to gain representation in parliament. In the last elections, the Kurdish party in alliance with two tiny extreme-left parties collected 5.63 percent of the total vote.

Primarily because of the 10 percent threshold, elections resulted in an artificial two-party parliament for the first time in 52 years and a single party government after 11 years of coalition government. In the euphoria following the election, the fact that 46 percent of voter preferences were not translated into a single seat was not a great concern. Rather, liquidation of the old political elite and the rise of a one-party government displaced any concern with the legitimacy of a parliamentary configuration with such a representation deficit."

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