1978 Constantinopolitan Constituent Assembly election (Queen of Cities)

The 1978 Constantinopolitan Constituent Assembly election was held on December 17, 1978 to elect all 200 members of the Constituent Assembly, a body that was tasked by the government with writing a new constitution that would replace the previous 1943 Constitution. The election differed from regular legislative elections as parties were forced to join on an electoral list in order to provide a clearer picture for the electorate. The results of the election were surprising as the Nations' List, a common list of ethnic parties, gained an impressive 18% of the popular vote and came in third. Despite this success, ethnic parties still found themselves isolated as the socialists would united with the left wing of the republicans in order to adopt their proposals while maintaining the vast majority of the Great Reforms.

The Constituent Assembly's proposal went on to be adopted through a constitutional referendum in 1979, becoming the new Constitution of the Republic on June 1, 1980.

Electoral system
The election of the Constituent Assembly in accordance with the 1978 Constituent Assembly Law that provided for proportional representation with no electoral threshold. However, the memory of the extreme division of the 1976 election led the government to force every participating party to join an electoral list, roughly in accordance with the political ideologies that were present at the time. Voting for the Constituent Assembly was mandatory but penalties for not participating were not enforced.

Context
The idea of constitutional reform arose during the Tulip Revolution as some, mainly on the left, felt that the old 1943 Constitution facilitated the one-party rule of the Citizens' Party. The victory of the left in the 1977 election meant that the Erkmen government would advance in its agenda of adopting a new constitution. In March 1978, the Parliament adopted the Constituent Assembly and Constitutional Revision Laws, setting up the framework for December's election.

Through the adoption of a new constitution, the left wanted to enshrine human rights as inviolable, reform the political system to ensure more independence for the country's judiciary, establish the State's responsibility to better the condition of its citizens through welfare and grant more power to the arrondissements in their local administration. While initially opposed to a constitutional revision, the centrist republicans began advocating for the entry of the Great Reforms into the new constitution. The right-wing Reform Party was opposed to the reform, arguing that it would further state interventionism into the economy while the far-right Party of Freedom argued for the abolition of monoculturalism, the restoration of the role of religious organizations, the constitutional prohibition of homosexuality and abortion, and a return towards religious education.