Türkiye's politics: a president and an assembly bound to one election day

Why neither branch can end the other alone

Article 77 of the constitution, as amended in 2017, sets one date for two contests: elections for the Grand National Assembly and for the presidency "shall be held on the same day every five years". Article 116 then governs what happens when either side wants to go early. The assembly may renew elections with a three-fifths majority of its total membership, which is 360 of the 600 seats. The president may renew them by decision alone. In both cases the text is identical: the general election of the assembly and the presidential election "shall be held together".

The effect is a mutual tie. A president who dissolves the assembly also ends a presidential term, and an assembly that wants a new president has to stand for re-election on the same ballot day. The powers of both organs continue until the new ones are inaugurated, and the terms that follow run a fresh five years.

One clause tilts the arrangement. A president may be elected twice at most under Article 101, but Article 116 adds that where the assembly renews elections during a president's second term, that president "may run for the presidency once more". A renewal called by the president carries no such allowance. An early election therefore costs whichever side calls it its own office, and when the assembly calls it during a second term, it can also hand the president a third run.

The same logic reaches vacancies. Under Article 106, if the presidency falls vacant with a year or less to go before the general election, both elections are renewed together; if more than a year remains, the new president serves only until the assembly's scheduled date and both are then elected on the same day again. However the calendar is disturbed, the constitution pulls the two elections back into one.

The system took effect with the elections of 24 June 2018, and the two branches have faced voters together at every general election since, in 2018 and in May 2023.

What the executive presidency took from the assembly

The amendments passed the assembly on 21 January 2017 as Act No. 6771 and were approved in a referendum on 16 April 2017. Wikipedia's account records that they were "narrowly accepted", and that on referendum day, while voting was still under way, the Supreme Electoral Council lifted the rule requiring each ballot to carry an official stamp. The opposition parties claimed that as many as 2.5 million unstamped ballots were counted as valid.

What the amendments removed can be read in the text itself, because the repealed articles stay in it as numbered gaps. Article 99, on censure, reads "(Repealed on January 21, 2017; Act No. 6771)". So do Article 100 and Article 102, and the office of prime minister went with them: executive power now "belongs to the President of the Republic" under Article 104, and the president appoints and dismisses vice-presidents and ministers.

A deputy appointed to the cabinet loses the seat. Vice-presidents and ministers are "accountable to the President of the Republic", and the assembly's remaining tools against them are the parliamentary inquiry, the general debate, the written question with a fifteen-day deadline for a reply, and a criminal investigation that needs a three-fifths vote to open.

Encyclopaedia Britannica dates the implementation to July 2018 and records the expansion of the assembly from 550 to 600 seats as part of the same package. The candidacy age has moved three times: 30 under the early republic, 25 after an amendment in 2006, and 18 after the 2017 referendum, which is also the voting age.

How far a presidential decree can reach

Article 104 gives the president a decree power "on matters relating to the executive power" and then fences it four times. A decree may not regulate fundamental rights, individual rights or the political rights in the fourth chapter of the constitution. It may not touch matters the constitution reserves to law, or matters already "explicitly regulated by law". Where a decree and a law conflict, the law prevails, and once the assembly passes a law on the same subject the decree "shall become null and void". The ministries themselves are created, merged and abolished by presidential decree under Article 106.

Those limits fall away in an emergency. Article 119 allows the president to declare a state of emergency for up to six months, on grounds that run from war and uprising to natural disaster, pandemic disease and "severe economic crises". The declaration goes to the assembly on the day it is published, and the assembly can shorten, extend or lift it, extending by at most four months at a time. Emergency decrees carry the force of law and are free of the Article 104 limits. They lapse unless the assembly debates them within three months, and Article 148 bars any challenge to them before the Constitutional Court "as to form or substance".

On ordinary legislation the assembly has the last word. The president has fifteen days to promulgate a law or send it back, and the assembly overrides a return with an absolute majority of its total membership, 301 votes, provided it adopts the text unamended. Budget laws cannot be returned at all.

The budget is the assembly's clearest remaining lever, and the constitution blunts it too. The president submits the central government budget at least seventy-five days before the fiscal year. Deputies may not propose amendments that raise spending or cut revenue, and if neither a budget nor a provisional budget is adopted in time, Article 161 applies the previous year's budget "increased by the revaluation rate". A deadlock over money leaves the state funded.

Who appoints the judges who review both branches

The Constitutional Court has fifteen members under Article 146. The assembly elects three of them, two from nominees of the Court of Accounts and one from lawyers nominated by the bar associations, and the president appoints the other twelve, drawing on candidates put forward by the Court of Cassation, the Council of State and the Council of Higher Education, or directly from senior officials, lawyers, judges and prosecutors. Members serve twelve years, cannot be re-elected and retire past sixty-five.

The court reviews laws, presidential decrees and the assembly's rules of procedure, and it hears individual applications from anyone who claims a right guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights has been violated by a public authority. Constitutional amendments it may review for form only: whether the required majorities were reached and the procedure followed.

The Council of Judges and Prosecutors decides who enters the judiciary, where judges serve, who is promoted and who is disciplined or removed. Article 159 gives it thirteen members. The Minister of Justice presides and the ministry's undersecretary sits ex officio; the president selects four further members from among judges and prosecutors, and the assembly elects seven through a joint committee, with two-thirds and then three-fifths majorities before the choice falls to lot. Apart from dismissal from the profession, its decisions "shall not be subject to judicial review".

The same constitution states in Article 9 that judicial power "shall be exercised by independent and impartial courts on behalf of the Turkish Nation". The Wikipedia account of Turkish government, citing "judicial capture" and the imprisonment of opposition politicians, says Türkiye "is not considered a democracy" and describes a competitive or fully authoritarian system; the European Commission's 2023 report criticised how democratic institutions operate, and Türkiye rejected that criticism.

How Turkish parties win seats and lose them

The 600 deputies are elected for five years by proportional representation from constituencies apportioned among the 81 provinces by population. A party needs 7% of the national vote to enter the assembly, and smaller parties can clear that bar by joining an alliance with larger ones. Independent candidates face no national threshold and need only enough votes for one seat. With a population of 85,372,377 at the end of 2023, one seat stood for roughly 142,000 people.

In the IPU's data as read in September 2026, 592 of the 600 seats were filled, 118 of them by women, which is 19.9%. The average age of members at the June 2023 election was 52.1 and the youngest was 24. The women's quotas the IPU records are voluntary, set in individual party statutes, and no seats are reserved for any group.

The state pays for parties, and has since 1965. A party that contested the last general election and passed the threshold receives 0.04% of general budget revenues each year; parties above 3% but below the threshold receive support in proportion to their vote, and the sums triple in election years. Foreign money is banned outright, anonymous donations are refused and the Constitutional Court audits party accounts.

The same court can close a party. Article 69 lets it dissolve one permanently, on a case brought by the Chief Public Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation, where the party has become "a centre" for activities against the principles in Article 68, including the indivisible integrity of the state and the secular republic. Members whose acts or statements caused the closure may not found, join or direct another party for five years. The court may instead cut state aid wholly or in part.

Turnout at both local and general elections usually exceeds 80%. Coups have closed parties too: the Democrat Party was shut down after 1960 and the Justice Party after 1980. On 20 May 2016 the assembly stripped almost a quarter of its own members of immunity from prosecution, including 101 deputies from the pro-Kurdish HDP and the main opposition CHP.

What the army keeps in Turkish politics

Four times the military took power or forced a government out: coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980, and in 1997 the removal of a prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, through what the sources call a memorandum. On 27 April 2007 the army issued a statement ahead of that year's presidential election saying the armed forces stood ready to protect "the unchangeable characteristics of the Republic of Turkey". On 15 July 2016 factions in the armed forces attempted a coup that failed within hours. The Turkish government reported 13,251 people held in prison in connection with it as of 2024, and the purges that followed reached military officers, police, judges, governors and civil servants.

The constitution now places command in civilian hands in explicit terms. Article 117 has the president represent the office of Commander-in-Chief "on behalf of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey", appoint the Chief of the General Staff, and answer to the assembly for national security. Article 104 gives the president the decision on the use of the armed forces.

The National Security Council remains, chaired by the president, with the vice-presidents, four ministers, the Chief of the General Staff and the commanders of the land, naval and air forces. Its decisions are "advisory", and the president sets its agenda.

How provinces and mayors answer to Ankara

Türkiye is a unitary state of 81 provinces and 973 districts, and Article 126 places the provinces inside the central administration. Voters elect six kinds of office: the president, the assembly, municipal mayors, district mayors, provincial and municipal councils, and the muhtars of villages and neighbourhoods. Local elections come every five years on their own cycle; the latest fell in March 2024, ten months after the general election.

The constitution gives the centre two holds over what voters choose locally. Article 127 grants "administrative tutelage" over local administrations, and it allows the Minister of Internal Affairs to remove elected local organs or their members, as a provisional measure, once an investigation into an offence related to their duties has begun. A Council of Europe monitoring committee found in 2011 that Türkiye had fundamental deficits in implementing the European Charter of Local Self-Government, naming administrative tutelage and the ban on languages other than Turkish in public services.

At the local elections of March 2024 the CHP won the mayoralties of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Antalya. In March 2025 the Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the CHP's presidential candidate, was detained and arrested with around 100 other people, and the protests that followed from 19 March 2025 saw 1,879 people detained. In May 2026 the Ankara appeals court declared the CHP primaries void, a ruling Human Rights Watch criticised.

Which alliances Türkiye has joined and kept

Türkiye's commitments abroad were fixed early in the Cold War. It entered the Second World War on the Allied side on 23 February 1945, became a charter member of the United Nations the same year and joined the Council of Europe on 9 August 1949. After Soviet demands for bases on the Turkish Straits, the United States declared the Truman Doctrine in 1947, and Türkiye fought with the UN forces in Korea before joining NATO in 1952.

The European track has run for four decades. Türkiye applied for full membership of the European Economic Community in 1987, joined the EU Customs Union in 1995 and opened accession negotiations in October 2005. Its membership of the Council of Europe carries into domestic law: Article 90 of the constitution gives duly ratified treaties the force of law, and where one on fundamental rights conflicts with a Turkish law, the treaty prevails.

Its other memberships face in other directions. Türkiye has belonged to the G20 since 29 September 1999, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation since 25 September 1969, the Organization of Turkic States since 2009, and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, the Economic Cooperation Organization, the D-8, the OECD and the OSCE. Turkish troops landed in Cyprus in 1974, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was declared nine years later; Türkiye recognises it and no other state does. This catalogue records that position and takes none of its own.

In May 2022 Türkiye blocked the start of NATO accession talks for Finland and Sweden, and in June 2022 it agreed to support them. Treaty-making is split between the branches: under Article 90 a treaty generally needs an assembly law approving its ratification, and under Article 104 it is the president who ratifies and promulgates it.