YUMAK AND SADAK v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 17 on 20 April 2007, criticising in particular the analysis of the Turkish electoral system made by the Chamber in its judgment, they submitted that that judgment gave the Contracting Party an extremely wide margin of appreciation as regards the introduction and operation of the electoral system. 67. After 9 July 2007, the date on which a panel of five judges allowed the applicants’ request for the case to be referred to the Grand Chamber, early parliamentary elections took place in Turkey. 68. Whereas they had commented at some length on the elections of 22 July 2007 in the observations they submitted to the Grand Chamber on 7 September 2007, the applicants’ representatives made it clear at the hearing on 21 November 2007 that the application had been lodged in order to secure a ruling that there had been a violation resulting from the elections of 3 November 2002, not those of 22 July 2007. 69. The Government argued at the hearing that, in so far as the applicants’ complaints related to Turkey’s constitutional structure, they should be considered to be an actio popularis, and maintained that the general results of 22 July 2007 had confirmed the Chamber’s findings in its judgment of 30 January 2007. 70. The Court must therefore determine the scope of the examination of the case it is required to make, deciding in particular whether it can restrict itself to studying the results of the elections on 3 November 2002, without taking into account events after the Chamber judgment. 71. The Court reiterates that, according to its settled case-law, the “case” referred to the Grand Chamber necessarily embraces all aspects of the application previously examined by the Chamber in its judgment, there being no basis for a merely partial referral of the case (see Cumpǎnǎ and Mazǎre v. Romania [GC], no. 33348/96, § 66, ECHR 2004-XI, and K. and T. v. Finland [GC], no. 25702/94, §§ 140-41, ECHR 2001-VII). 72. The “case” referred to the Grand Chamber is the application as it has been declared admissible. This does not mean, however, that the Grand Chamber may not also examine, where appropriate, issues relating to the admissibility of the application, just as is possible in normal Chamber proceedings, for example by virtue of Article 35 in fine of the Convention (which empowers the Court to “reject any application which it considers inadmissible ... at any stage of the proceedings”), or where such issues have been joined to the merits or where they are otherwise relevant at the merits stage (see K. and T. v. Finland, cited above, § 141). 73. The Court observes at the outset that it does not have jurisdiction to examine a domestic electoral law in the abstract, and that it is primarily for the national authorities, and in particular the courts, which are specially qualified for the task, to construe and apply domestic law (see, for example, Gitonas and Others v. Greece, 1 July 1997, § 44, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-IV, and Briķe v. Latvia (dec.), no. 47135/99, 29 June 2000).