Erdogan wil niet af van kiesdrempel

The government says it’s eager to resolve Turkey’s Kurdish problem. It should know that part of persuading a nationalist movement to lay down its arms requires convincing it to trust parliamentary institutions. Yet the government is resisting a proposal by the Republican People’s Party, the main opposition group, to lower the national voting threshold to 3 percent.

It probably fears the reform’s effect, not only on Kurdish nationalists but also on factions within its ranks. What keeps the liberals united with the nationalists and the religious right within the governing Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.) is the fear that they’d be obliterated if they went their separate ways. After all, the A.K.P. came to power in 2002 with just 34 percent of votes because a total of 46 percent went to various parties that couldn’t make the national threshold.