4 YUMAK AND SADAK v. TURKEY JUDGMENT for Mr Tatar, an independent candidate who had polled 9.69% (9,914 votes). 17. Of the eighteen parties which had taken part in the elections, only the AKP and the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi – the People’s Republican Party, a left-wing party) succeeded in passing the 10% threshold. With 34.26% of the votes cast, the AKP won 363 seats, 66% of those in the National Assembly. The CHP, which polled 19.4%, obtained 178 seats, or 33% of the total. Nine independent candidates were also elected. 18. However, not only DEHAP, which polled 6.22%, but many other political parties were unable to obtain seats in Parliament. These included the True Path Party (DYP, centre-right), the National Action Party (MHP, nationalist), the Young Party (GP, centrist) and the Motherland Party (ANAP, centre-right), which polled 9.54%, 8.36%, 7.25% and 5.13% of the votes cast respectively. 19. The results of these elections were generally interpreted as a huge political upheaval. Not only did the proportion of the electorate not represented in Parliament reach a record level in Turkey (approximately 45%) but in addition the abstention rate (22% of registered voters) exceeded 20% for the first time since 1980. As a result, the National Assembly which emerged from the elections was the least representative since 1946, the year in which a multiparty system was first introduced. Moreover, for the first time since 1954, only two parties were represented in Parliament. 20. To explain the National Assembly’s unrepresentativeness, some commentators have referred to the cumulative effect of a number of factors over and above the existence of a high national threshold. For example, because of the protest-vote phenomenon linked to the economic and political crisis, the five parties which had obtained seats in the 1999 parliamentary elections – including the three which had formed the governing coalition between 1999 and 2002 – were unable to reach the 10% threshold in 2002 and were accordingly deprived of representation in Parliament. Similarly, electoral fragmentation had an effect on the results in that numerous attempts to form pre-electoral coalitions had come to nothing. 21. After these elections the AKP, which had an absolute majority in Parliament, formed a government. B. The parliamentary elections of 22 July 2007 (subsequent to the Chamber judgment) 22. In early May 2007 the Turkish Parliament decided to hold early parliamentary elections, choosing 22 July 2007 as the date. The decision followed a political crisis resulting from Parliament’s inability to elect a new President of the Republic to follow on from Ahmet Necdet Sezer before the expiry of his single seven-year term of office, on 16 May 2007.