Turkish Parliament Speaker Bülent Arınç said Sunday that blocking candidates from entering parliament through legal mechanisms runs counter to democratic principles, making his remarks while speaking to the Anadolu Agency in Edremit.
Arınç argued that fair representation has been a core democratic requirement for the past four years and that election law should deliver proportional representation, stable governance, and an end to fragmented politics. He noted that Türkiye's 10 percent electoral threshold is unusually high compared to European standards, where no country imposes a threshold above 5 percent.
Despite his concerns, Arınç acknowledged that all four parties currently in parliament, including the AKP, ANAVATAN, DYP, and CHP, oppose lowering the threshold. He said alternative mechanisms must therefore be explored to ensure parties are represented in proportion to their vote share.
As an example of the threshold's impact, Arınç pointed to the 2002 elections, in which the DYP received 9.5 percent of the vote and roughly 3.5 million ballots but won no seats in parliament because it fell just short of the 10 percent cutoff.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in August 2006, in its own words.