YUMAK AND SADAK v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 7 2. The electoral system 30. Law no. 2839 on the election of members of the National Assembly, published in the Official Gazette on 13 June 1983, lays down the rules of the system for parliamentary elections. 31. Turkey’s Grand National Assembly is a single-chamber parliament which currently has 550 members elected to serve for five years. The elections are held in the constituencies formed by the eighty-one provinces in a single round of voting. They take place throughout the national territory, on the same day; suffrage is free, equal, universal and secret. Counting the votes and recording the results is done in public. Each province is represented in Parliament by at least one MP. The other seats are allocated in proportion with the local population. Provinces which have between one and eighteen MPs form a single constituency; those with between nineteen and thirty-five MPs are divided into two constituencies; while Istanbul, which has more than thirty-five seats, is divided into three constituencies. 32. Section 16 of Law no. 2839 provides: “... [P]olitical parties may not present joint lists ...” 33. Section 33 of Law no. 2839 (as amended on 23 May 1987) provides: “In a general election parties may not win seats unless they obtain, nationally, more than 10% of the votes validly cast ... An independent candidate standing for election on the list of a political party may be elected only if the list of the party concerned obtains sufficient votes to take it over the 10% national threshold ...” 34. In allocating seats the D’Hondt system of proportional representation is used. That method – under which the votes cast for each list are first divided by a series of whole numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) and seats then allocated to the lists which have the highest quotients – tends to favour the majority party. 35. Sections 21(2) and 41(1) of Law no. 2839 read as follows: Section 21(2) “Persons wishing to stand as independent candidates shall deposit with the competent Treasury authorities, as a guarantee, a sum equal to the gross monthly salary of a civil servant of the highest rank, and shall place a receipt for payment of that sum in the file presenting their candidature in the parliamentary election.” Section 41(1) “... if, in a parliamentary election, an independent candidate has not obtained sufficient votes to win a seat, the sum deposited as a guarantee shall be forfeited to the Treasury.” 36. Section 36 of Law no. 2820 on political parties (published in the Official Gazette of 24 April 1983) provides: