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Turkish Elections, June 2011: Statistics

Year                                        2011/2007
Total seats                                  550/550
Justice and Development Party (AKP)    326/341
Republican People’s Party (CHP)    135/112
Nationalist Action Party (MHP)      53/71
Peace and Democracy             36/20
Independents                               0/6

Summary of the results

For the table please see the PDF format
OTHER DETAILS
* Voter turnout:     87 per cent
* The number of MPs by province was redistributed according to the most recent population data.1
* Use of language other than Turkish was allowed for campaigning for the first time.
* Istanbul now has 15 more deputies to the parliament while Ankara’s representation has gone up by three.
* Since 1946 nine general elections have been called before the expiry of the full five year term and they are: 1954, 1973, 1983, 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2002 and 2007.2
* There are 81 provinces in Turkey which are further divided into districts, numbering 923 in total.3For electoral purposes, the country has 85 constituencies. The borders of the constituencies generally coincide with that of the provinces.
* Parties which received less than 10 percent of the valid votes are excluded from the allocation process.
* Elections are held under supervision of the judiciary.
* The Supreme Electoral Board consists of seven members and four substitutes; all of them senior judges.
* Kurdish block has increased its seat share in Parliament, though its share of votes has remained unchanged.

Nivedita Kapoor is a journalist with the Free Press Newspaper in Indore. Email

As part of the policy, the MEI@ND standardizes spellings and date format to make the text uniformly accessible and stylistically consistent. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views/positions of the MEI@ND. Editor, MEI@ND P R Kumaraswamy

Notes
1 Novelties await voters in June 12 elections with new law, Today’s Zaman, 17 February 2011

2 Turkey’s early elections end in disappointment for some parties, Today’s Zaman, 17 May 2008

3 OSCE/ODIHR Election Assessment Mission Report, 27 November 2007