YUMAK AND SADAK v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 3 THE FACTS I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE 11. The applicants were born in 1962 and 1959 respectively and live in Şırnak. They stood for election in the parliamentary elections of 3 November 2002 as candidates of the People’s Democratic Party (DEHAP) in the province of Şırnak, but neither of them was elected. A. The parliamentary elections of 3 November 2002 12. Following the 1999 earthquakes, Turkey went through two serious economic crises in November 2000 and February 2001. There then followed a political crisis, due, firstly, to the state of health of the then Prime Minister and, secondly, to the numerous internal divisions within the governing coalition, a grouping of three political parties. 13. It was in that context that on 31 July 2002 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (“the National Assembly”) decided to bring forward the date of the next parliamentary elections to 3 November 2002. 14. In early September three left-wing political parties, the People’s Democracy Party (HADEP), the Labour Party (EMEP) and the Democratic Socialist Party (SDP), decided to form a “Labour, Peace and Democracy Block” and to form a new political party, DEHAP. The applicants began their electoral campaign as the new party’s leading candidates in the province of Şırnak. 15. Such pre-electoral alliances had already been formed in 1991: the Nationalist Labour Party (MÇP – the successor to and predecessor of the MHP) and the Reformist Democracy Party (IDP) had secured seats for their candidates by joining the list presented by the Welfare Party (RP); and the People’s Labour Party (HEP – the predecessor of DEHAP) had won eighteen seats in Parliament by placing candidates on the list of the People’s Social Democrat Party (SHP). In that way some parties not likely to obtain 10% of the national vote sometimes manage to obtain parliamentary representation: they join the list of a larger party and then, once elected, leave it and go their own way, either with independent MPs or under the banner of another party. 16. The results of the elections of 3 November 2002 in the province of Şırnak gave the DEHAP list 47,449 of the 103,111 votes cast, a score of about 45.95%. However, as the party had not succeeded in passing the national threshold of 10%, the applicants were not elected. The three seats allocated to Şırnak province were shared as follows: two seats for the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma – the Justice and Development Party, a party of the conservative right), which had polled 14.05% (14,460 votes), and one seat