Turkey and the Asymmetric Objectives

I have mentioned before that I have been known to spend a pleasant afternoon in the local arts centre playing what are known as german-style games. For all-too obvious reasons, the themes popular in Britain and America are not considered good clean fun there, so German games tend more towards themes like infrastructure, agriculture and bean optimisation. Other common features of German games that I like are that all players tend to be in it to the end, the various players may be in competition or harmony at different times, and that there are multiple paths to victory. All of these, of course, are like elections.

Turkey has proportional representation (in the d'Hondt allocation, if you're interested; you only vote for one party, unlike STV, but it's still proportional). But then, Turkey's system might be better described as "kind-of" proportional. You see, to get any seats at all you have to get 10% of the vote nationally. To see why that might be a problem, consider the UK:

Region	Population, approx	Fraction of total
UK	62 million	100%
Northern Ireland	1.8 million	3%
Wales	3 million	5%
Scotland	5.2 million	8%

If you think a system where the SNP could get the vote of every single eligible Scot and still receive zero MPs isn't very proportional, then you know how Turkish Kurds feel.

There is a workaround, though: obviously an independent MP could never get 10% nationally, so they only have to get 10% in their region. (Obviously they still have to get enough votes to earn a place.)

So, the 2007 election results looked like this:

Image from Wikipedia

Blue for the conservative AKP, Red for the left-wing Republicans, Green for the Nationalists, and purple for the what-me-I-don't-know-anything-about-any-Kurdish-Democrats-party.

You may notice that the AK are pretty close to a two-thirds majority: that's important, because two-thirds is what you need to amend the constitution. The AKP have said that that's exactly what they want to do. The Republicans want to control 1/3rd of seats so they veto, and plenty of people feel that would be a good thing in general. Failing that, they at least want the AKP to have to negotiate with someone.

So, the objectives look something like this:

Party	Polling	Moderate Success	Release the victory balloons
AKP	45%-50%	50%+ of seats in assembly	2/3rds majority
Republicans	25%-30%	Stop the AKP getting 2/3rds	Get a full 1/3rd
Nationalists	10%-14%	Qualify for seats by beating 10% of vote	Overtake Republicans
Kurds	5%-10%	Hold steady	Keep out Nationalists

Now, this is where it gets interesting. The AKP can get a supermajority two ways: by driving up their vote share ten points, or by driving the Nationalist vote down to 9.9% or less. Which might be why Erodgan has started talking tough on Europe, being rude about Israel, and mentioning that Kemal Kilicdaroglu is an Alevi three or four times a week. This last stunt is generally considered about as classy as landing the emphasis on President Obama's middle name.

(The Alevi, by the by, are a Shia denomination, while the rest of Turkey is Sunni. I hadn't heard of the Alevi before, but the comparison seems to be Alevi~ Islam as Quaker ~ Christianity.)

Kilicdaroglu himself hasn't mentioned his own religion or lack of, as is appropriate for the leader of the most pro-secular party. However, there are intimations that the Republicans (who have historically given not one-half a damn what the Kurds think) are starting to pick up ground in the East. That could be partly because of Kilicdaroglu's minority heritage, or the fact that under his leadership the Republicans have backed off some of the One-Nation tubthumping they've done in the past.

So while the AKP are squeezing the Nationalists on the right, the Republicans seem to be trying to consolidate liberals and minorities on the left. They may not get on with the Nationalists, but they'd rather the MHP did get into parliament, because if they do it'll be very hard for the AKP to rule the roost.

I'm off to a job interview tomorrow, but hopefully I'll get another post up before election night on Sunday. Next week we're going into a bit of a dry spell, but we can talk about Thailand, Morocco, maybe São Tomé and Príncipe if I can get interested in it, and perhaps Italy and Latvia's ongoing squabbles if I'm still unemployed. Toodle pip.