The north plans to increase the minimum number of votes required for a political party to be elected to ‘parliament’, transport minister Erhan Arikli said on Thursday.
Speaking to Kibris TV, he said the ‘government’ will propose to ‘parliament’ that an ad hoc committee be established on the matter, adding, “I will talk to our partners about this, I think they will have a positive opinion.”
He said he believed an increase in the threshold would allow for “political alliances” to be created between the north’s political parties, in a similar way to how they currently exist in Turkey.
At present political parties in the north are required to win at least five per cent of the vote across the north to win any seats in ‘parliament’.
Five parties achieved that number of votes at the last ‘parliamentary’ election in 2022. The YDP won the fifth-most votes at that election, taking 6.4 per cent of the vote, and winning two seats.
In Turkey, the threshold stands at seven per cent, having been reduced from the country’s traditional 10 per cent ahead of last year’s elections in the country.
Given that the threshold is so high, political parties often form alliances, with the parties then being allowed to enter parliament so long as their alliance wins more than seven per cent of the national vote.
Seats are then awarded in 87 electoral districts, with the existence of alliances thus preventing a situation in which a party which performs well in some districts but fails to win any seats because they did not reach the minimum national threshold.
However, this is not such a major issue in the north, given that the electoral system allows voters to vote for candidates in any and all of the north’s six electoral districts regardless of where they live, meaning that the vote percentages differ little from district to district.
Speaking on the matter of when the election will be held, he said, “if it were up to me, I would resign today as the government and call an election.”
“There is a great benefit to holding early elections now, because 2025 will be a very difficult year for all of us, especially for the government. That is why I see great benefit in a new government welcoming the new year and taking measures,” he said.
The next ‘parliamentary’ election is scheduled to take place no later than February 2027, and ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel has long been insistent that his ‘government’ will run the course. However, no ‘parliament’ in the north has run its full term since 1998.
