On March 10, 2023, a presidential decision invoking the president’s power to call for early elections under article 116 of the Constitution of Turkey was published in the Official Gazette. The presidential decision was followed by two decisions of the Supreme Election Board (SEB) setting the election dates and the latest date by which holders of certain public offices who seek to run for membership of the parliament must resign or retire from their posts, in accordance with the Law on Parliamentary Elections. The SEB, which is the constitutional body responsible for regulating and supervising all public elections in the country under article 79 of the Constitution, decided that the parliamentary and presidential elections will take place on May 14, 2023. A presidential runoff election will take place on May 28, 2023, if necessary.
Presidential Election
Under article 101 of the Constitution, the president of the republic is elected in a general election with a simple majority of all valid ballots cast. If no candidate gets a majority, a runoff election is to be held between the two candidates who have received the most votes.
Article 116 of the Constitution provides that both the president of the republic and the unicameral parliament by a three-fifths vote of its members may call for early elections (“renewal of elections”). The electoral term for both the membership of the parliament and the president is five years, and the ordinary rule requires both elections to be held on the same day — the last Sunday preceding the elapse of five years from the date on which the previous elections were held. The last parliamentary and presidential elections were held on June 24, 2018. Accordingly, the elections would have taken place on June 18, 2023, had the president not called for early elections.
According to article 101 of the Constitution and articles 7 and 8 of the Law on Presidential Elections, political parties that have a parliamentary group (the formation of which requires at least 20 members of parliament) and parties that individually or collectively have won at least 5% of the votes in the previous parliamentary elections may nominate candidates for president. Any person eligible for the office may also be nominated by a written application signed by 100,000 eligible voters. (Law on Presidential Elections art. 8/A.)
Electoral Threshold and Electoral Alliances in the Parliamentary Election
Turkey has a comparatively high electoral threshold in parliamentary elections: a political party must win at least 7% of the national vote for its candidates to be represented in the parliament. However, article 12/A of the Law on Parliamentary Elections permits multiple parties to form “electoral alliances” by signing a joint protocol. Parties that are part of the same alliance may enter the elections under their own names, but their votes are combined for the purposes of the electoral threshold, meaning that parties that win less than 7% of the national vote may be represented in the parliament if they are part of an electoral alliance that collectively beats the threshold.
Kayahan Cantekin, Law Library of Congress
March 31, 2023
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