1941 Constantinopolitan general election (Queen of Cities)

The 1941 Constantinopolitan general election was held on December 7, 1941 in order to elect the fifth Parliament of the Sovereign City of Constantinople for the years 1942 to 1945. The election was held in the context of a complete takeover of the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches by the Citizens' Front, guaranteeing them a majority in both houses. Thanks to the redrawing of districts in the Chamber of Nations, the Front became the first party since the country's independence to obtain a supermajority in both chambers, allowing them to replace the 1925 Constitution in 1943.

On December 15, the Parliament voted in the members of the fifth Directory, which was once more dominated by members of the Citizens' Front.

Electoral system
In accordance with the 1935 d'Andria Law, both chambers of Parliament were elected via first-past-the-post, a system that greatly benefitted multi-ethnic parties such as the ruling Citizens' Front or the new Left Bloc.

Context
Following their resounding victory in the 1937 election, the Citizens' Front proceeded to eliminate all opposition in the country's political structure. By 1940, the party succeeded in taking complete control over the country's three branches of government, thus eliminating all checks to its reformist agenda. The end of Constantinople's democracy was met with opposition from the far-left and right-wing of the political spectrum, leading to a governmental crackdown on freedom of the press and assembly throughout 1938 to 1941. By the time of the election, the Citizens' Front held complete power and all other political organizations were forced to go through a complex procedure in order to fill candidates, relegating them to the rank of "systemic opposition".

With its newly found power, the Citizens' Front began large-scale reforms that sought to bring Constantinople into the 20th century, a period that is now known as the Great Reforms. Under the fourth Directory, these reforms included the adoption of the metric system (1938), the creation of a health insurance system for the country's poor and elderly (1939), the adoption of a new civil code (1940), the nationalization of railways (1940), and the adoption of Turkey's language reform and family name laws (1941), and the adoption of a new penal code (1941).

This period of reforms coincided with great turmoil in the rest of the continent with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Nazi Germany's Balkan Campaign and the entry of Bulgaria placed the Axis' forces at a mere 50 kilometers from Constantinople's western border. The rise in global tensions did not elude the Constantinopolitan government as it sought to preserve its neutrality by weakening its links to Britain and France while building closer relationships with Republican Turkey. A major step in the normalization of relations with Turkey came with Constantinople's agreement to adopt legislation that would mirror some of Ataturk's reforms (notably the Surname Law and the Turkish language reform). The city-states good relationship with its eastern neighbor was arguably one of the factors that prevented it from being invaded by Turkey during the war.