Draft:Local Elections in Turkey

There are two different schemes of local government in Turkey: Provinces that are accepted as metropolitan cities and those that are not. In general, we can summarize the structures in three main bodies: special provincial administrations, municipalities, and metropolitan municipalities. Metropolitan municipalities were created in 1984. With the new law 6360, which was changed in 2012 and started to be applied after the 2014 local elections, the cities with a population of 750.000 and above are accepted as metropolitan cities, and Special Provincial Administration Units are closed in those cities. Instead, a metropolitan municipality serves as the representative body for the whole province. Because of this difference in administration units, analyzing metropolitan city and province administrations separately would give us a clearer picture.

Provinces without Metropolitan Municipalities
After the 2014 local elections, with the new law, there are 51 provinces that are not metropolitan cities. In those provinces, the traditional local government system continues to be used. The local government constitutes of two main bodies in this type of administration. There are Special Provincial Administrations and Municipalities.

Special Provincial Administration
Special Provincial Administration is a legal entity where central and local governments blend together. It is responsible for the administrative, legal, and social issues of the whole province. The president of the Special Provincial Administration is the “Vali,” (governor) who is an appointed official of the central government. The legislative branch of the Special Provincial Administration is the Province General Council. Its members are elected in the local elections every 5 years. The executive branch of the Special Provincial Administration is the Executive Commission. Half of the members of the executive commission are determined by an election in the Province General Council. The members choose executive commission members for one year. The other half of the executive commission is appointed by the president of the Special Provincial Administration, in other words, by the Vali.


 * Special Provincial Administration
 * Vali
 * Province General Council
 * Executive Commission

Municipalities
Municipalities are constituted by the Mayor and the Municipality Council. In the local elections, voters select the Mayor directly by single-member simple plurality and select the members of the Municipality Council with proportional representation. The Mayor of the central district is called the Province Mayor.


 * Municipality
 * Mayor
 * Municipality Council

Metropolitan City Administration
With the new law that was passed in 2014, there are 30 metropolitan cities in Türkiye. There are two main bodies in metropolitan city administrations. These are metropolitan municipality and district municipalities.

Metropolitan Municipality
Metropolitan Municipality is the legal entity in metropolitan cities that replaced the Special Provincial Administration, which was closed down after 2014 in metropolitan cities. There are two main entities in the Metropolitan Municipality Administration.
 * Metropolitan Municipality
 * The Metropolitan Mayor
 * The Metropolitan Municipality Council.

With this new structure, only one assembly represents the whole city, the Metropolitan Municipal Council. The Metropolitan Municipal Council is not directly elected, but the members are determined based on the district municipal council results. The Mayor is elected with a simple plurality vote.

District Municipality
Other than the metropolitan municipality, there are district municipalities for each district of the metropolitan city. Each district has its own mayor and municipal council, too.


 * District Municipality
 * The District Mayor
 * The District Municipality Council

Both district mayors and district municipality council members are directly elected.

Local Elections System
The Turkish local elections system is organized by Law 2972, “Election system and procedure for local administrations, neighbourhood headmen's offices and councils of elders,” issued in 1984. According to law 2972, local elections are conducted every 5 years. The elections are free and equal, the ballot is secret and general, and the results are determined publicly. Voters living in provinces considered metropolitan cities vote for metropolitan mayor, district mayor, district municipality council, and neighbourhood headman. Voters who live in provinces that are not metropolitan cities vote for the province general council, mayor, municipality council, and neighbourhood headman. Those who live in villages vote for the province general council and neighbourhood headman.

Election Rules for Mayors
Mayors for the metropolitan, province and district municipalities are selected with a single member simple plurality vote. The candidate with the plurality of the votes is elected as the mayor.

Election Rules for the Members of the Province General Council
The province general council is constituted by the members coming from each district. The number of members each district will have in the province general council is determined by their population. You can see in the table below the number of seats based on the population.

The Province General Council is determined by a proportional representation system with a 10% threshold. The members that are determined according to the rules shown in Table 1 will be shared among parties based on their vote shares.

First, the amount equal to ten percent of the total valid vote in that district is extracted from all parties’ votes. The parties with no vote left after that subtraction will not have seats in the council. The remaining parties’ votes are divided firstly by one, then two, and then three, and this process continues until the results come to the number of seats that district has in the council.

Election Rules for Municipality Councils
Municipality Council is determined similarly to Province General Councils. The council is determined with a proportional representation system with a 10% threshold. The seats that each district will have are determined based on the population of each district. The table below shows the population/seat allocation of districts.

In municipality councils, there are quota seats. First, the quota seats are subtracted from the total number of seats. Quota seats are filled by members nominated by the party with highest votes share in the municipal council elections. Then, the parties with less than ten percent of the vote share are eliminated. The remaining parties’ votes are divided until the total results equal seat number. Finally, the seats are divided based on the results of that division.

Rules for Metropolitan Municipality Council
The president of metropolitan municipality council is metropolitan municipality mayor. District municipality mayors are the natural members of metropolitan municipality council.

The Metropolitan Municipality Council is established by the members from each district of that city. The number of the district seats in the metropolitan municipality council is determined by the division of the municipal council seat of the district by 5. The member numbers of the districts are determined based on their population, and that number is divided into five in order to find the number of seats they have in the metropolitan municipality council. After the quota seats are subtracted, the members of the metropolitan municipality council are determined in the order that they are elected in the district municipality council. The selection continues until it reaches the number of seats that the district has in the metropolitan municipality council.

The first members of the quota seats in district municipality councils automatically have a seat in the metropolitan municipality council.