By Wikipedia Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warned Libya against taking cruel steps to crush an uprising by its people, Reuters reported Tuesday. "Taking…
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The Grand National Assembly of Turkey is the unicameral parliament of Turkey which is the sole body given the legislative prerogatives by the Turkish Constitution. It was founded in Ankara on 23 April 1920 in the midst of the Turkish War of Independence. The parliament was fundamental in the efforts of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to found a new state out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the World War I. There are 550 members of parliament who are elected for a five-year term by the D'Hondt method, a party-list proportional representation system, from 85 electoral districts which represent the 81 administrative provinces of Turkey (Istanbul is divided into three electoral districts whereas Ankara and İzmir are divided into two each because of their large populations). To avoid a hung parliament and its excessive political fragmentation, only parties that win at least 10% of the votes cast in a national parliamentary election gain the right to representation in the parliament. As a result of this threshold, only two parties were able to obtain that right during the 2002 elections and three in 2007. Independent candidates may run. However they must also win at least 10% of the vote in their constituency to be elected. This rather high threshold has been internationally criticised, but a complaint with the European Court for Human Rights was turned down. Since the 2002 general elections, an absolute majority of the seats belong to the members of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), who lead a single-party government. The Republican People's Party (CHP) was the only party that succeeded in being represented in Parliament, along with the AKP, in 2002. As of 1 January 2007, there were 7 parties who had representation in the parliament and nine independents because of resignations and transfer, nevertheless CHP still remained by far the biggest opposition party. At the 2007 election, three parties managed to clear the 10% threshold — AKP, CHP, and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Furthermore, Kurdish politicians from the Democratic Society Party (DTP) circumvented the threshold by contesting the election as independents; 24 of them were elected, enabling them to constitute their own faction in the Assembly.
