2013 Constantinopolitan general election (Queen of Cities)

The 2013 Constantinopolitan general election was held on June 2, 2013 to elect all 200 members of the 21st Parliament. The election resulted in a victory for the incumbent Prime Minister Djelal as his Liberal Reform Party gathered 41.1% of the popular vote, the largest share by any party since the restoration of democracy in 1975, which in turn granted them 87 seats, the most out of any party since the adoption of proportional representation. The leftist forces lost seats while New Way bounced back under new leadership and the new Public Square gained representation. The election led to the Second Djelal Government with a coalition between the Liberal Reform Party and Public Square.

Electoral system
The 200 deputies of Parliament were chosen from a single nationwide electoral district via closed-list proportional representation with a 5% threshold with the number of seats being determined by the D'Hondt method following the revision of the electoral law. Gender parity was in place as 50% of names in the electoral list were to be female. This was the first election where voters could send their ballots by post.

Background
The four years since the previous election were dominated by policies geared towards the sorting out the crisis that had affected the once-booming Constantinopolitan economy. The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 heavily affected Constantinople's banking sector, prompting the 2008-2010 Constantinopolitan banking crisis and forcing the government to step in in order to rescue the country's major financial institutions. The bailout of Constantinople's banks was funded by the IMF, which led to a debt crisis as the debt-to-GDP ratio worsened to 113% by late 2010. In order to balance the budget and avoid a sovereign debt default the government imposed strict austerity measures that would defund the country's social programs while increasing taxes.

By the time of the 2013 election the country had begun an economic recovery as GDP growth soared to 2.2% in 2012 while the debt-to-GDP ratio was reduced to 92%. This would lead Prime Minister Djelal to declare that the crisis was over and that, if elected for a new term, the government would enact tax cuts on corporations and IT specialists in order to transform Constantinople into the "technological capital of Europe and the Middle East".

Despite the government's general popularity, it faced significant backlash over its proposal to construct a new bridge over the Bosporus between the boroughs of Phanarakion and Hiéron, on the northern side of the Bosporus Strait. Critics argued that the proposed bridge would endanger the protected wetlands and green areas that housed most of the city's water supply. The unpopularity of the bridge, along with the calls for increasing the city's green areas led to the rise of the urbanist Public Square movement in 2011.

Participating 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 26 endorsements from elected officials (arrondissement mayors or councilors). For the 2013 election, twelve parties were able to make it onto the ballot. However, of these 12 parties only five had any chance of getting past the 5% threshold.