2003 Siirt Province by-election

2003 Siirt Province by-election

← 2002 March 9, 2003 2007 →
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All 3 seats of the Province of Siirt to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey
Turnout	61.77%
First party Second party Third party   Leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Deniz Baykal Doğu Perinçek Party AK Party CHP İP Last election 1 seat, 17.56% 1 seat, 8.92% 0 seats, 0.14% Seats won 3 0 0 Seat change 2 1 ±0 Popular vote 55,203 8,972 500 Percentage 84.82% 13.79% 0.77% Swing 67.26% 4.87% 0.63%
By-election results by district
Members of Parliament before election Mervan Gül (AKP) Mehmet Fadıl Akgündüz (IND) Ekrem Bilek (CHP) Elected Members of Parliament Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (AKP) Öner Ergenç (AKP) Öner Gülyeşil (AKP)

The 2003 by-election in the Province of Siirt was held on 9 March 2003 in order to elect three Members of Parliament from the eastern Turkish province of Siirt to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The by-election was held four months after the 2002 general election in November, which the Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey declared null and void in Siirt due to voting irregularities in the district of Pervari. The council decided on 2 December 2002 that the complaints by the local electoral authorities had influenced on the election result, thus calling a by-election.^[1]

The by-election remains a significant event in Turkish politics, since it allowed Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to run for parliament. Despite having won the 2002 general election with nearly a two-thirds supermajority, Erdoğan had been barred from running for office due to a previous conviction for inciting religious intolerance in 1998. The AKP government, led by the party's co-founder Prime Minister Abdullah Gül, annulled Erdoğan's political ban and thus allowed him to run in the by-election. Gül subsequently resigned and Erdoğan became the 25th Prime Minister of Turkey on 14 March 2003.

Four parties contested the by-election, as opposed to the 19 that contested the 2002 general election. Similar to general elections, the by-election elected three MPs through a party-list proportional representation system using the D'Hondt method. The parties contesting the election were the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Republican People's Party (CHP), the Workers' Party (İP) and the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP).^[2] The AKP won all three seats up for election with 84.82% of the votes, gaining the two other seats that had been won by the CHP and an independent candidate in November 2002. The CHP came second with 13.79% of the vote and lost their seat despite increasing their vote share since November.