YUMAK AND SADAK v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 25 (south-eastern Turkey) 34,000 were needed. The distribution of seats among the provinces was manifestly more favourable to the smaller provinces, which made it possible to ensure that the principle of fair representation was respected. 102. In conclusion, the Government submitted that, where the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature was not hindered, regulation of the electoral system and the system of political representation of a State Party to the Convention fell outside the purview of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. The 10% threshold applied to political parties in parliamentary elections did not prevent the people from expressing their opinion freely on the choice of their representatives in Parliament. That had been proved by the elections held on 22 July 2007. The conclusions of the Chamber’s judgment of 30 January 2007 were therefore correct. The Chamber had not departed from the Court’s case-law nor given a new interpretation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. C. The third-party intervener’s submissions 103. The non-governmental organisation Minority Rights Group International agreed with the applicants. They said that the 10% threshold was the highest national threshold in Europe. It had been introduced without being accompanied by the slightest corrective measure which might have remedied the problems it caused. On account of the threshold it was absolutely impossible for a party operating on a regional basis to be represented in Parliament. In Turkey that meant more precisely that none of the Kurdish parties could enter Parliament even though in their own regions these parties regularly achieved scores comparable with that reached by the applicants in 2002 (over 45% of the votes cast). It was clear that all the measures taken by the Government, centring on the 10% threshold, were the result of a deliberate policy of exclusion. Moreover, even if the policy had not been deliberate, the effects would have been the same. 104. In addition, the excessively high threshold ran counter to the object and purpose of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, namely guaranteeing the right to the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature. By depriving a whole segment of the population of the possibility of one day being represented in Parliament by a party which voiced its opinions, the national threshold removed the very essence of that right. Such a serious and systematic interference with the rights of a whole group, unique as it was among all European electoral systems, could not be justified by the margin of appreciation left to the State and therefore manifestly constituted a violation of the Convention.