at least five percent of the vote to qualify as a full parliamentary party, or Fraktion. The three-constituency rule favours those smaller parties with a regional stronghold. For example, the German Party (DP) only won 3.3% of the second vote, but was able to win 15 seats by electing ten members from constituency seats, mostly in the party's heartland of Lower Saxony. In 1957, the DP won 3.4% of the second vote, but elected six members from constituency seats, enabling them to send 17 members to the Bundestag. The three-constituency rule was not used again until 1994, when the PDS won four direct mandates in Berlin, enabling them to send 30 delegates to the Bundestag, despite the fact that they had only 4.4 percent of the second vote. After another gap it was used in the 2021 election, where PDS's successor Die Linke received 4.9 percent of the second vote, but were saved from exclusion by winning exactly three constituencies (Berlin-Treptow-Köpenick, Berlin-Lichtenberg and Leipzig II) and received 39 seats. The clause is meant to minimise the risk of party fragmentation, which partially caused the incapacitation of the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic. The clause is not explicitly mentioned in the constitution as this could cause a conflict with the fundamental principle of equal votes, which states that each vote must have equal weight. However, the general consensus is that the clause is important for the stability of the party system, the capacity of the parliament and the government and overall for the political stability of the state. Thus, a balance must be achieved between the two existing constitutional objectives. The Federal Constitutional Court approves of the threshold clause, arguing that it is allowed to violate a constitutional principle within certain limits, if this is essential to achieve a more important constitutional objective such as the adherence to a principle of electoral law. Because of this, the Federal Constitutional Court allows the threshold clause to be maximally five percent. Thus the legislator has no possibility of increasing it. National minority parties, such as the SSW, which won a seat in the 2021 parliamentary election, are now freed from the electoral threshold due to the fact that under Constitutional Law it is imperative that minorities are protected. This special regulation however does not necessarily apply to a Turkish party, as the Turkish do not yet enjoy the status of a national minority