Erdogan, leader of Justice and Development Party

ANKARA, November 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Most Turkish political parties could end up with no seats in parliament after Sunday's general election because of the country's much-criticized electoral system, analysts said Saturday, November 2.

Since 1983, Turkey has used a proportional representation system which requires parties to win a minimum 10 percent of votes nationwide to be eligible to take any of the 550 parliamentary seats.

In the 1999 elections, the country's main Kurdish party, the People's Democracy Party (HADEP), attracted massive support in the mainly Kurdish east and southeast, but was left out of parliament as it only polled 4.7 percent of the total vote.

The national barrier was introduced to favor single party governments, but in the last decade it has failed to serve its stated purpose, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The three elections since 1991 all yielded a succession of coalition governments which failed to survive until the end of their five-year mandate, triggering early elections and an unstable political environment.

The system has also come under fire for discounting votes cast for parties that fail to reach the threshold.

"The threshold leads to unjust results," said Hasan Cemal, a commentator writing in the liberal Milliyet daily.

"It alienates supporters of the parties which are left outside parliament, such as HADEP, and also greatly narrows the platform of Turkish politics," he added.

Sunday's elections could spark similar complaints.

Opinion polls predict that only two of the 18 parties in the race - the Justice and Development Party (AK) and the Republican People's Party (CHP) - are guaranteed to win parliamentary representation.

And several mainstream parties could lose all their parliamentary seats, according to the polls.

"Sunday's elections could produce a very distorted picture," Erol Tuncer from the Turkish Economic and Social Research Foundation (TESAV), an influential think-tank, told AFP.

"First, AK party could receive only 35 percent of the vote but gain control of 70 percent of parliament.

"Secondly, the collective votes for parties which are left out of parliament could amount to 30 to 35 percent," he said.

"Such a development would spark a crisis regarding representation and questions over the legitimacy of a parliament which fails to account for 30 percent of the vote," Tuncer added.

The threshold level has been the subject of a long-running public debate with political parties complaining, but failing to amend the electoral law once they get into parliament.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, AK leader, tipped to win a clear victory in Sunday's race, has voiced similar concerns.

"If 35 percent of the votes are not represented in parliament, it can be considered grounds for early elections," he said earlier this week.

There are others - like Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit whose party risks being left out of parliament - who favor lowering the barrier, but fear it would open parliament's doors to subversive ethnic and religious movements.

Four out of five Turks blame the threshold for "unfair" or "insufficient" representation in parliament, according to a nationwide survey of 2,400 people commissioned last year by the Turkish Association of Businessmen and Industrialists.

Seventy-nine percent of them said the electoral system functioned badly, but 62 percent of the respondents opposed repealing or reducing the threshold for fear it would lead to a fragmented parliament and make it more difficult to form a government.

Sunday's elections might just provide the impetus for reforms, especially if several heavyweight parties are eliminated from parliament, said Tuncer of the TESAV think-tank.

More than 40 million Turks, battered by a severe recession, head to the polls Sunday, November 3.

The general elections, originally slated for April 2004, were brought forward because of political instability triggered by outgoing Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's ill health and rifts in his coalition government.

However, many doubt whether Sunday's poll will bring much-craved stability at a time when Turkey is tackling an economic crisis with massive loans from the International Monetary Fund and with its decades-long bid to join the European Union apparently in trouble.

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