As more and more new parties seem to emerge in Turkish politics and defectors leave mainstream parties to pursue their own paths, surveys suggest this will have little impact on the big picture. Several polls have suggested that the ruling party-led People’s Alliance will lead the elections in 2023, followed by the main opposition-led Nation Alliance.
There are over 100 political parties in Turkey, with 21 new ones formed in the last year, according to the records of the Supreme Court of Appeals’ Prosecutor’s Office updated on Dec. 2.
While it is a three-digit number, only a handful of these parties make it to Parliament in elections. More importantly, these parties need to have active organizations in at least 41 provinces to be able to run in elections. The parties lacking these organizations are referred to as "signboard parties."
For Ihsan Aktaş, a prominent commentator and chairperson of GENAR Research Institute, the new parties can be summed up in two groups: those who splintered from the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and those who splintered from the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The first group consists of the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) led by Ali Babacan and the Future Party (GP) led by former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. The second group consists of former Şişli District Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül’s Party for Change in Turkey (TDP) and dissident Muharrem Ince’s Homeland in Thousand Days movement – although Ince has not officially formed a political party.
Aktaş noted that the DEVA and the GP did not quite make an impact as the Nation Alliance took center stage amid intense tensions and the alliances’ early election demands.
The GP, in particular, has refrained from making any statements about joining the CHP-led alliance, with executives claiming it was still too early to discuss since the elections are scheduled for 2023.
Meanwhile, Sarıgül’s brand new party is expected to appeal to the Democratic Left Party (DSP) voter base rather than the CHP, although Sarıgül used to be a member of the main opposition party. There had also been speculation that he was trying to convince 20 CHP lawmakers to form a group in Parliament, a tactic previously used by the Good Party (IP).
According to research company ORC’s December survey, only 1.1% of people said they would vote for Sarıgül if he were to form a new party, while 3.5% said they would vote for Ince.
“In reality, not much vote transfer takes place between the two alliances,” Aktaş told Daily Sabah, adding that neither Sarıgül nor Ince has expressed interest in joining an alliance as of yet.
More importantly, Aktaş claimed that the main problem in Turkish politics is the lack of groundbreaking change in terms of the big picture, noting that the main party of the alliance sets the tone for others. For instance, the Nation Alliance was upset when polls suggested that the CHP would gain 23% of the votes in elections, which fell below expectations.
On a different note, tensions between the IP and the pro-PKK Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) have led to uncertainty for the alliance, as the HDP has not fully distanced itself from the terrorist group, which upsets the IP's voter base.
“The position of each party in the Nation Alliance affects the other,” Aktaş said, adding that the fact that the alliance has still not been able to figure out a candidate for the 2023 presidential elections also constitutes a problem.
Another minor party that emerged after the 2018 parliamentary elections was the New Welfare Party (YRP). Fatih Erbakan, son of late Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who pioneered the National Vision movement, which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was previously a part of, formed the YRP five months after the 2018 elections. Although Erbakan was an executive member of the Felicity Party (SP), he left it in 2014 after he failed to get elected as the party's chairperson, losing to Mustafa Kamalak. He claimed that the SP deviated from the National Vision ideology and evicted the SP from its main headquarters in the capital Ankara for not paying its monthly rent. The party has no seats in Parliament.
When asked whether the alliances would turn into a two-party system in the future, Aktaş said it would take Turkey at least a decade before it would be sociologically prepared for such a system.
“Each party has different characteristics and dynamics. We may have alliances, but it does not look possible for parties to join forces all together at the cost of their own,” the pollster said.
According to a poll by the Konsensus Research Company, the People's Alliance between the AK Party and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) would receive 51.4% of the votes, while the Nation Alliance, consisting of the IP and the SP, would receive 48.4% of the votes.
Another survey by OPTIMAR found that the AK Party would receive 41.2% of the votes, while the CHP would get 23.7%, followed by the MHP with 11.1%, the IP with 10.9% and the HDP with 8.4%, which is below the 10% election threshold.
Similarly, GENAR Research Company's November survey, which was conducted in 31 provinces with 3,000 participants, shows that the AK Party has the potential to receive 42.1% of the votes, with the CHP receiving 22.8%. The survey revealed that the MHP and IP have enough support to pass the election threshold with 10.3% and 10.1%, respectively. The HDP, on the other hand, receives only 9.7% of the votes.
MetroPOLL Research Company, AVRASYA Research Company and the ORC also released their December survey results recently, which pointed to the AK Party taking the lead once again but predicted it to take less than 40% of the votes.
In MetroPOLL's survey, the AK Party receives 30.2% of the votes, while the CHP gets only 16.4%. Surprisingly, these two parties are the only ones that can cross the 10% election threshold, according to MetroPOLL, as 12.8% of the participants expressed that they were undecided.
According to ORC Research Company's recent survey, the AK Party receives 36.1% of the votes, while the CHP gets 25.4%, followed by the MHP with 12.7%, the IP with 10.4% and the HDP with 9.3%.
In all instances, the HDP would fail to pass the threshold and enter Parliament. According to Aktaş, the threshold was one of the main incentives for CHP voters to vote for the HDP.
The AK Party has formed a commission to revise the electoral law, which includes lowering the threshold to somewhere between 5% and 7% and restricting lawmakers’ abilities to transfer to different parties. But this would not have a major impact on small parties, Aktaş said.
“After all, there are no parties that aim for a 5% threshold,” Aktaş said and added: “Perhaps some minor parties may enter Parliament if the threshold is pushed back to 1%,” as many minor parties struggle to obtain above that.
