and on 8 July 2008, its Grand Chamber by 13 votes to four that the former 10% threshold imposed in Turkey does not violate the right to free elections (Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR). It held, however, that this same threshold could violate the Convention if imposed in a different country. It was justified in the case of Turkey in order to stabilize the volatile political situation over recent decades. Natural threshold The number of seats in each electoral district creates a "hidden" natural threshold (also called an effective, or informal threshold). The number of votes that means that a party is guaranteed a seat can be calculated by the formula () where ε is the smallest possible number of votes. That means that in a district with four seats slightly more than 20% of the votes will guarantee a seat. Under more favorable circumstances, the party can still win a seat with fewer votes. The most important factor in determining the natural threshold is the number of seats to be filled by the district. Other less important factors are the seat allocation formula (D'Hondt, Saint-Laguë, LR-Droop or Hare), the number of contestant political parties and the size of the assembly. Generally, smaller districts leads to a higher proportion of votes needed to win a seat and vice versa. The lower bound (the threshold of representation or the percentage of the vote that allows a party to earn a seat under the most favorable circumstances) is more difficult to calculate. In addition to the factors mentioned earlier, the number of votes cast for smaller parties are important. If more votes are cast for parties that do not win any seat, that will mean a lower percentage of votes needed to win a seat. Notable cases An extreme example occurred in Turkey following the 2002 Turkish general election, where almost none of the 550 incumbent MPs were returned. This was a seismic shift that rocked Turkish politics to its foundations. None of the political parties that had passed the threshold in 1999, passed it again: DYP got only 9.55% of the popular vote, MHP got 8.34%, GP 7.25%, DEHAP 6.23%, ANAP 5.13%, SP 2.48% and DSP 1.22%. The aggregate number of wasted votes was an unprecented 46.33% (14,545,438). As a result, Erdoğan's AKP gained power, winning more than two-thirds of the seats in the Parliament with just 34.28%