The status of The Supreme Board of elections in the 1982 Constitution and its effect on parliamentay elections

The Supreme Board of Election (SBE) is a constitutional institution authorized for the overall management and supervision of elections. It is arranged at legal level with the Paliamentary Election Code, 5545, then at constitutional level with the 1961 Constitution. SBE executes all functions to ensure the fair and orderly conduct of the elections from the beginning to the end and takes final decisions on all irregularities, complaints, and objections. SBE's decisions are final and no appeal shall be made to any authority against them. In the first part of this study, some information about the parliamentary elections that are applied in Turkish Republic before the existence of SBE, elections' results, parties reprensantation ratio in the parliemant and supervision of the elections is given. Then the establishment of SBE, its gaining the constitutional status and its state, especially its status and legal characteristic of its decisions, in Constitution 1982, are examined. In the second part, SBE's effects upon deputyship before and after parliamentary elections are evaluated in general and some important decisions, which affected the democratic life and led to fierce political debate, are analyzed. The purpose of this study is to emphasize how important the application of proper and fair elections and supervision of them is with regard of the principle of 'Constitutional State', to shed light on the Turkey's political history by the way of parliamentary elections, to make an assessment about the SBE's constitutional status and the legal quality of SBE in the light of present debates, and to indicate how important SBE's existence is with its decisions in terms of elections.