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]

Quick Facts Turnout, First party ...

2003 Siirt Province by-election

← 2002 March 9, 2003 2007 →
← outgoing members Members elected →
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)

Close

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.

The Province of Siirt is a province in the south-east Anatolia region of Turkey with a predominantly Kurdish population. With an electorate in 2003 of approximately 119,198, it elects three of the 550 MPs to the Grand National Assembly. In the 2002 general election, the province was won by the Kurdish nationalist Democratic People's Party (DHP), which gained 32.17% of the votes. Since the party polled below 10% nationally, it was unable to win any parliamentary seats. According to the Turkish electoral system, the DHP's votes were allocated to the winning party of the election, namely the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had come second with 17.56% of the vote. Turkish businessman Fadıl Akgündüz was elected as an independent with 13.65% of the votes, coming third. The CHP came fifth with 8.92% of the vote, but won the province's final MP since it was the only other political party apart from the AKP to poll above 10% nationwide.

In the 2002 general election, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AKP won 363 seats in Parliament and formed the first single-party government since 1987. While serving as Mayor of Istanbul in 1998, he had been convicted of reciting a poem which incited religious intolerance in Siirt and sentenced to 10 months in prison. After serving four months, Erdoğan founded the AKP in 2001 as a moderately Islamist political party, capitalising on voter dissatisfaction with the existing political parties and their poor economic records. His imprisonment forced him to give up the mayoralty and resulted in a political ban. Despite being the AKP leader, Erdoğan was unable to seek parliamentary election in 2002 and thus the party's co-founder Abdullah Gül became Prime Minister instead. With the help of the opposition CHP, Gül pushed forward constitutional reforms which nullified Erdoğan's political ban and allowed him to run for office.

The by-election was held on 9 March 2003, four months after the 2002 general election. Four parties contested.

Critics of the AKP have often accused the government of deliberately forcing the Supreme Electoral Council to call a by-election so that Erdoğan could become Prime Minister. Despite allegations that ballot boxes were broken, the residents of Doğan Köy refused to vote until their village received the support it needed during periods of heavy snow, putting the reasons for their boycott in question. The AKP government began a heavy snow clearing operation in the village before the by-election.^[9] The initial complaints that ballot boxes had been broken had been made by the AKP.^[10] Controversies regarding the exact reasons why the AKP's initial candidate Mervan Gül stepped down, as well as the Supreme Electoral Court's decision to ban Fadıl Akgündüz from running again as an independent due to an arrest warrant from Interpol have also generated criticism.^[11]