The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg held hearings on whether Türkiye's 10 percent electoral threshold violates political rights, receiving arguments from both the Turkish government and the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP).
A government lawyer defended the threshold as essential to political stability, noting that Türkiye's Constitutional Court had already upheld it. He pointed out that DEHAP candidates could have run as independents or joined coalitions, and faced no threshold barrier in local elections.
DEHAP's lawyer countered that the threshold leaves voters in southeastern Anatolia without parliamentary representation and noted that no EU member state imposes a barrier as high as 10 percent.
The case was brought by DEHAP members Resul Sadak and Mehmet Yumak, who applied to the ECHR in 2003 following the November 2002 general elections. They argued the threshold violated their right to stand for election under Article 3 of the Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, after their party secured nearly 46 percent of the vote in their districts yet failed to win seats. The court accepted the case in March 2006 and is expected to issue its ruling at a future date.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in September 2006, in its own words.