It's interesting to see how Turkey voted.
It seems that there are two winners, AK party (rules the current one party government) and the Ultra Nationalists MHP. And one big loser, the CHP.
The 10% threshold, established by the secularist in the early eighties of the last century are now working against them. Cynical or not?
In my columns of March 1, 2007 and February 28, 2007, I wrote about three important issues regarding how a head of state, in the Netherlands our Queen Beatrix, has to deal with the constitution.
The first one is that in the Netherlands a one-party government can not rule the country. Second is that always one member of the Royal family is in fact in charge of the army, so a Coup d'etat is impossible. And third, our head of state must take care about minorities. All written down in our constitution. And all these important issues are not guaranteed in the Turkish Constitution.
Also, in the Netherlands we have a popular vote system. Which is neither in Turkey, nor in the USA and UK.
If only the last can be introduced in Turkey, in my opinion, the next generation of politicians will be able to solve and handle the current polarized Turkish political environment.
Anyway, I hope that the AK party will reach out for consensus and compromise politics.
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7 comments:
Hans, what do you mean by popular vote system? Introduction of the 10% threshold had nothing to do with protecting secularism or something. One cannot even claim that secularists introduced it. It was a time when people felt the country was becoming ungovernable at the hand of unharmonious coalitions, so they said, let's have a system favoring strong governments. It was a time, you know, no party could dream of 47% of the votes.
Also, alcohol ban on the election day has been a long time tradition in Turkey. Not an AKP invention. But you probably knew that, didn't you?
Comment moderation! Uh-huh, now I know, how you can write yourself out all over the blogosphere. By slowing the comment traffic at your own site. Smart man...
Nihat, I don't want hate mail and spam, therefore the moderated function.
popular vote is: if a party gets 1% of the votes, they get 1% of the seats. In Turkey's case, 1% is 5 seats.
The 10% threshold makes people voting for parties they maybe not really support.
Btw, both Yasemin as I can aprove messages..) Most of the blogs are moderated, not censored..)))
kindest
Okay, you mean, what we call in Turkish nispi temsil (proportional representation). Yes, that has to be reinstituted.
so, we agree on that..))
didnt know that alcohol ban was a tradition, was here in ist all during 2002 elections..
Then, I take it that in 2002 you were underage to contemplate drinking, or the weather wasn't as hot to make you crave for a beer.
Nihat,
I remember that I was drinking beer..))
Probably I had something bought the day before..))
I am 49 fyi ONLY..))
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