2015 Constantinopolitan general election (Queen of Cities)

The 2015 Constantinopolitan general election was held on May 3, 2015 in the aftermath of the dissolution of the coalition between the Liberal Reform Party and Public Place after a series of corruption investigations were launched against high-ranking members of the PLR, which led to the dissolution of the 21st Parliament and the appointment of Adam Nowakowski as interim prime minister. The election resulted in the country's most divided legislature since 1976 with New Way setting the record for the least seats won by the largest party in Parliament in the country's 90-year history. After two months of negotiations, New Way's Suleiman Euzdemir formed a five-party center-left coalition government.

This election marked a seismic shift in Constantinopolitan politics as the two parties that had dominated the country's politics since the late 1990s, New Way and the Liberal Reform Party, obtained their lowest share of the popular vote since 1993 and 1976 respectively. Unlike in 2009 however, this was not attributed to the rise of left-wing parties as the major winners of this election proved to be the liberal Together for Change and the national-conservative Renewal Party that rose in the aftermath of the various scandals that had undermined the Liberal Reformists in the last two years.

Electoral system
The 200 deputies of Parliament were chosen from a single nationwide electoral district via closed-list proportional representation for a four-year term. The number of seats of each party was determined by utilizing the D'Hondt method with a 5% threshold that parties would need to cross in order to get any seats. In accordance with the 2003 Gender Equality Law each party's electoral list would need to be 50% female and 50% male.

Background
Since the 2013 election, the country had fully recovered from the Great Recession as economic growth soared to an average of 9% between 2013 and 2015. While the country's debt was under control and the government ran a budget surplus, this was achieved through unpopular fiscal austerity measures that were imposed on the country by the International Monetary Fund. Despite the unpopularity of austerity, prime ministers Djelal (who had to retire because of health issues) and Adamyan remained popular.

The election was held in the midst of the ongoing 2015 European migrant crisis as the country accepted 25,000 refugees since the beginning of 2015 despite the government's anti-immigration stance. The expected arrival of hundreds of thousands of new migrants to Europe led to a prolonged debate over the city-state's responsibility in accepting refugees. While conservative parties such as the Liberal Reform and Renewal parties campaigned on their opposition to illegal immigration while minority parties such as Solidarity (a Muslim pro-immigration party) argued in favor of accepting refugees.

Political parties
For their registration in order to be able to participate in the 2013 election political parties had to pay a €20,000 deposit and be able to garner at least 27 endorsements from elected officials (arrondissement mayors or councilors). For the 2013 election, 20 parties were able to make it onto the ballot. However, of these 20 parties only ten had a realistic chance of getting past the 5% threshold.

Aftermath
The fragmentation of the legislature in the wake of the election led to a two-year period of political instability that would see the country governed by five different prime ministers. After nearly three months of negotiations New Way, Together for Change, Public Place, the Socialists and Justice! would agree to form a coalition government under prime minister Euzdemir. This government's activity was dominated by its attempts to deal with the 2015 European migrant crisis. However, the lax attitude that the government chose to address the refugee problem led to a decline in popularity of all parties involved, leading New Way members to vote Euzdemir out as party leader, thus bringing down the government and replacing Euzdemir with Interior Minister Théodore Kosmidis after his popularity soared following his anti-immigration stance.

As prime minister, Kosmidis continued with the coalition agreement that had been signed between the previous government's parties despite being firmly located on the right wing of his own party. His tenure as prime minister was marked by the introduction of stricter border controls and the beginning of military patrols of Constantinople's coastline. Kosmidis' authoritarian leadership of his own party led to multiple defections and resignations in his own caucus with most former deputies assembling in the newly created Democratic Party. The short-lived Kosmidis government was ultimately forced to resign after the Constantinopolitan Navy were filmed abandoning a capsized refugee boat to its fate, leading to the drowning of a Syrian refugee couple. He was succeeded by the Alexandre Vasileiadis, the country's first openly socialist prime minister since Mehmet Emiroglu in 1994-1996.

While prime minister Vasileiadis did not possess a parliamentary majority as his coalition of the Social-Ecologist Party, Public Place, the Socialists and Justice! only held 86 seats, relying on the external support of New Way. While Vasileiadis adopted a moderatly pro-refugee policy, his attempts to significantly increase social spending in the 2017 budget failed when New Way voted against the bill, leading to the downfall of his government.

The next prime minister was Majid Denktash (EPLC) at the head of a four-party coalition (NV, PLR, EPLC, PP) that enjoyed a comfortable majority of 113 seats in Parliament that would ultimately last a mere month. While achieving EU assistance in the relocation of thousands of refugees to other European countries Denktash's proposed budget would fail after the new New Way leadership decided that it would not satisfy its promises that had been made to the electorate in 2015.

The fifth prime minister of the 22nd Parliament would be Serge Baghdasaryan, the new leader of New Way. His coalition government was formed at the last minute as the Liberal Reform Party and the Socialists conceded to New Way's term in the face of a proposed election that would potentially see all three parties exit from Parliament. While Baghdasaryan's government was short-lived, he was the first prime minister who began to implement the proposed raises in social spending that were proposed by New Way during their 2015 campaign. However, his government reliance on the occasional support of other parties came to an end when both Public Place and the Social-Ecologist memberships voted in favor of calling for an early election.