The People's Alliance reached a final decision about the election threshold, setting it at 7%, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Chair Devlet Bahçeli said Wednesday.
Commenting on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's recent statement that "Our friends have not yet taken the final decision of our friends from MHP. However, 7% is clear," Bahçeli said, adding that MHP views the 7% decision positively.
In a written statement, Bahçeli described the debates on "whether (the election threshold) should be 5% or 7%" as a "waste of unnecessary labor."
Bahçeli stated that sincere and well-intentioned talks about the electoral system and threshold were held through the commissions established as alliance partners, and announced that the threshold has been clarified.
"After his visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, our president (Erdoğan) announced to the members of the press that the threshold would be 7%. As a matter of fact, the search and studies on the threshold ended with this statement and the decision of the People's Alliance was registered as 7%. No further evaluation is required," he said.
The current 10% threshold and the highest averages method, known as the D'Hondt method, were introduced with the 1982 Constitution, which was adopted in a referendum after the 1980 military coup.
The aim of the threshold was to prevent political instability as the former system of proportional representation introduced with the 1961 Constitution led to fragile coalition governments in the 1970s, with small or fringe parties gaining Cabinet powers far beyond their votes due to grisly coalition bargaining.