According to the 1982 Constitution, by-elections are used in the event of a vacancy in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM).
By-elections can only be held once per election period. And it is conditional.
By-elections cannot be held until at least 30 months after the general election and one year before the general election.
In the event of a vacancy of 5 percent of the number of members of the Parliament (30 deputies) or in the event of a constituency having no deputies in the Parliament, by-elections shall be held in those constituencies.
Since the September 12 constitution, there is no other precedent except for the by-elections held once in 1986 to renew 11 parliamentary seats and once in 2003 in Siirt to elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose political ban was lifted.
So why has the country been obsessed with by-elections for days?
CHP Chairman Özgür Özel announced that they will discuss this issue with Numan Kurtulmuş, the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, and said, “We are thinking of establishing a by-election ballot box. We will have a very ambitious move once a decision is taken on that issue,” he said and the debate started.
In fact, a similar formula had been on the agenda before and when there were calls to force the government to hold elections through the cine-i millet, Özel reacted by claiming that it was a ‘trap’:
“If there is a by-election, it goes like this. You resign all 130 deputies, 60 days later, a ballot box is set up, and all parties nominate candidates for only the places where you resigned. All parties nominate candidates for the seats vacated by the CHP. And since you go to the nation and demand early elections, you cannot take part in the by-election. Will you go back to the parliament you left? If you say ‘I will go’, you might win half of them. When you don't go, your opponents take these 130 deputies and the government takes most of them under today's conditions. The number of deputies from 330 becomes 460. They no longer need you, me or the ballot box to change the constitution. They can convene on their own and change the constitution in the parliament because they have over 400 deputies. Those who are discussing cine-i millet don't know this constitutional reality, so they say, ’Why don't you resign?‘ If the ballot box would come with our resignation, we wouldn't stop for a minute, we wouldn't stop for a minute. But there are no general elections, there are by-elections. They are held for vacant seats. That's why this is the issue of the nation.’
So what has changed today?
If 22 CHP deputies resign and the elections are renewed in those constituencies, has the possibility of the government winning those seats disappeared?
After the 2024 local elections, when the government was at its weakest and the CHP was at its highest morale, Özgür Özel rejected calls for ‘early elections’ on the grounds that it would be a shame for the government and the electorate, but why did he bring the ‘by-election’ formula to the agenda today, at a time when the CHP was at its most discredited in the eyes of the public, such as the Uşak scandal, and when the opposition votes were falling in the polls?
Even if there are by-elections, what will this force the government to do?
If the local elections do not force an early election, what has changed for the government and the CHP today?
Even if the CHP wins all the parliamentary seats in every renewed seat in the by-election, will there be a result that will change the arithmetic table in favor of the opposition on issues such as constitutional amendments or early elections? No, it would not.
Then there is only one option:
I wonder if this by-election exit, which looks like a ‘rest’, is a new call to the government to ‘negotiate with us’?
Or is it an attempt to force a new door for ‘backdoor diplomacy’, which was last pushed through Bülent Arınç but failed to yield results?