Why does AK Party fear lowering electoral threshold?

One of the critical keys to the success of the settlement process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is obviously an electoral system reform. The 10 percent threshold inherited from the military era following the Sept. 12, 1980 coup was put in place to prevent political instability caused by fragile and ineffectual coalition governments in the 1970s, but with time, it became the principal tool to prevent Kurdish parties from entering Parliament. The current pro-Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), has only ever won around 6 percent of the vote in a general election and recent polls do not give it more than 6.5 percent.
Ballot box is not just a box! The 10 percent threshold admittedly continues to raise an insurmountable obstacle for the BDP to have representatives in Parliament. On the one side you ask the PKK to disarm and participate in the political process but on the other, you continue to place serious obstacles before this participation. The inconsistency is obvious. It is true that the BDP succeeded in having representative in Parliament in the last two elections, but this success was obtained by presenting independent candidates. However, do not forget that this method of bypassing the fateful threshold requires difficult maneuvers since the voters of the BDP belonging to the same constituency must be guided subtly to the different independent candidates running in this constituency. In the June 12, 2011 elections, the BDP's maneuvers were so successful that the most number of its representatives ever were elected. Do not also forget that the BDP is denied generous state funding since it does not participate directly in the elections. This denial is certainly not fair at all. The high electoral threshold could have easily been changed since this requires a simple majority vote, but the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) preferred not to touch it until now. Nevertheless, signs have appeared indicating that the AK Party is working on revising the current electoral law. According to the Hürriyet and Sabah newspapers, the AK Party government has the intention of lowering the threshold to 7 or 8 percent but also limiting the constituencies to five or six representatives at the same time. I had to propose an electoral system reform in this column (see my article “Electoral system reform,” on Sept. 27, 2012) and I later published a report on the same subject last September for Bahçeşehir University's Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM) called “A new electoral system proposal for Turkey.” Using simulation models, the report compares the distribution representatives among parties for the same vote distribution in the actual electoral system and in the reformed system that I proposed. This proposal is based on four principles: 1) Remove the 10 percent threshold; 2) As the absence of a threshold would increase the risks of fractionalization and political instability, narrow the constituencies so that the largest ones would have a maximum of six seats; 3) Increase the number of seats in Parliament from 550 to 600 and elect 550 of them in narrowed constituencies through the current D'Hondt method and elect 50 of them in a national constituency through the proportional method; and 4) As the new electoral system will be a mixed one, give two votes to each voter like in the German electoral system. In this alternative electoral system the representation of the BDP is not only guaranteed but they can have 36 deputies in Parliament with 6 percent of the vote as is the case currently. This electoral reform will allow overcoming, on the one hand, one of the main obstacles jeopardizing the settlement process and preventing, on the other, an extreme fractionalization of the party system thanks to narrowed constituencies setting a de facto threshold in each constituency. Under the new system, unfair representation would be alleviated through the 50 seats elected at the national level through proportional voting so even a small party with 2 percent of the vote could get a seat. The crucial point is that the AK Party suffers no risks regarding its number of deputies for the same vote share. On the contrary, the de facto vote share's threshold of getting a referendum majority (331 seats at least) is lowered for the AK Party from its level of 50 percent in the current system to 46 percent in the reformed system. Thus, the question is, why is the AK Party refusing to drop the 10 percent threshold or lower it dramatically? What is the reason behind its intention to still maintain the threshold at a high level? What is the AK Party afraid of? Eventually, I believe to have some answers but I have no room. I hope to come back to the issue on Saturday.