While Turkey’s presidential elections will go to a second round on May 28, voters already decided the composition of the new Grand National Assembly of Turkey, TBMM, or parliament, which now has 16 parties and more female lawmakers than ever before.
The 600-seat parliament will have 16 political parties thanks to the political alliance system that was introduced by the executive presidential system in 2018.
The People’s Alliance of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a comfortable majority in parliament with 323 lawmakers, according to first official results.
His ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, has the highest number of deputies, with 263. HUDAPAR, a party with alleged ties to the Turkish branch of Hezbollah, and the Democratic Left Party also entered parliament under the AKP lists, with four and one lawmakers respectively.
AKP’s far-right ally, the Nationalist Movement Party, MHP, has 50 lawmakers. Other AKP allies in the New Welfare Party have five seats.
The Nation Alliance of Erdogan’s rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, faced disappointment in the parliamentary election as well as in the presidential race, where he finished round one with 44.5 per cent of the vote, behind Erdogan, who won 49.5 per cent.
Kilicdaroglu’s social democratic Republican People’s Party has 130 lawmakers and its right-wing ally, the Good Party, has 44.
The liberal DEVA party, the political Islamist Future Party, the conservative Felicity Party and the centrist Democratic Party, which entered the elections under the banner of the CHP, now have 14, 10, 10 and three seats respectively.
The socialist Labour and Freedom Alliance, led by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, HDP, which entered the elections under the Green Left Party, has 65 lawmakers.
The Green Left Party has 58 lawmakers and its smaller left-wing allies, the Labour Party, EMEP, and Social Freedom Party hold two and one seats respectively.
The Workers Party of Turkey, TIP, elected four lawmakers.
The number of female lawmakers has increased significantly but remains low. Only 121 lawmakers out of 600 are female, up from 100 in the previous parliament. Fifty came from the AKP and four from its national ally, the MHP.
Proportionately, the Green Left Party has the highest female representation of any party, with 30 female lawmakers out of 58.
The CHP, Good Party and TIP have 30, six and one female MPs in the new parliament.
In terms of age, parliament remains fairly old and patriarchal overall. Only five MPs are under 30 and the oldest member of parliament, Devlet Bahceli, is 75. The leader of the MHP will be the acting speaker of until a new speaker is elected.
The new parliament is expected to start working next week. The election of a new speaker is expected to happen after the second round of presidential elections on May 28.
Source: Balkan Insight
