President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it was clear that the electoral threshold would fall to 7 percent in the arrangement they were working on and that the MHP was looking at it warmly. “Behind the scenes” of lowering the election threshold was discussed in political environment of Ankara.
Answering questions from journalists on the plane after his visits to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, President Erdogan said: “Our friends with the MHP (partner of AK Party in Republican Coalition) have not yet taken the final decision of our friends, which is one of the almost unchanged agenda items in politics. But 7 is clear. MHP also looks at 7 positively.”
ELECTORATE THRESHOLD DOWNGRADED FOR MHP (National Movement Party)
According to some journalists, although the Cumhur (Republic) Alliance insists that the elections would be held on time (2023) in reply to opposition’s calls for early elections, the reason why the ruling party has preferred to take initiative to lower the threshold was explained in AK Party lobbies.
“The election threshold is pulled down to 7 percent to prevent the formation of an impression on the MHP (partner of AKP) that if it entered the election without an alliance, it would not be able to excess the present threshold which is 10 percent. Because in polls that are not reflected in the public opinion, we also see the MHP has an electoral threshold problem, at the moment.
Party circles refer to this move as a rescue package (to surpass the threshold in elections) and emphasize that a step can also be taken in the close future for President Erdogan whose support for the vote is declining as well.
