Turkmen Terzi
Having secured a15th election victory earlier this month, few expect a different outcome for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan when the presidential election run-off is staged.
In the May 14 election support for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) declined by more than seven percent compared to the 2018 general election.
Erdoğan’s biggest worry is no longer about the future of the AKP’s future but of the ruling People’s Alliance that was established in February 2018 between AKP and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to ensure the survival of
his Palace regime.
The Supreme Election Board (YSK), key names from main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and “critical journalists and media houses”, were blamed by some during the election night of manipulating the voting results so as to keep Erdoğan as President.
Local and international election observers reported that the elections in Turkiye during the past 10 years were not free and fair.
The May 14 presidential and parliamentary election were the biggest test for Erdoğan who has been in power for the past two decades.
Turkish voters will head back to the polls on May 28 for the runoff election to determine whether Erdoğan will remain president or if he will be succeeded by his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Neither man managed to secure the required 50 percent plus one vote for to be elected as the president and avoid a runoff.
The main opposition CHP, other parties and non-partisan NGOs were more motivated to protect ballot boxes from AKP’s election observers who stole votes in the previous election.
But this time, stolen votes were seemingly counted for Erdoğan’s electoral alliance Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and ultra-nationalist presidential candidate of Ancestral Alliance, Sinan Oğan.
Turkey’s ruling Justice AKP has been accused on numerous accusations of electoral fraud and violence since the 2014 Presidential election.
Using bogus opinion polls, sending incorrect results to the YSK, early announcement of AKP’s victory through state-run Anadolu Agency (AA), controlling social media, cutting electricity to prevent vote counting in the oppositions’ strongholds, threatening electoral officers are some of the tactics employed by Erdoğan’s AKP to steal votes.
But the opposition parties, especially the main opposition CHP, had strategically mobilized party members around the ballot boxes to prevent AKP’s vote rigging due to bitter experience of 2015, 2018 and 2019 elections in which AKP were accused of large-scale voter fraud.
Due to past experience and public outcry, CHP members were more awake during the election night to protect the votes but it seems that Erdoğan managed to rig the election with the help of some key CHP members who were responsible for manipulating the results in favor of the Erdoğan’s People Alliance.
Turkey’s opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu accused Russia of spreading conspiracies, deep fakes and tapes ahead of May 14 Presidential and Parliamentary election.
Kılıçdaroğlu might have to provide further details to prove his allegations against Kremlin, but the Turkish journalists exposed that the opposition candidate’s own aides meddled with May 14 election on behalf of incumbent Erdoğan. Onursal Adıgüzel, the Deputy Chairman of Information and Communication Technologies for the CHP, had to resign following data flow failure on the election night.
And more surprisingly, Turkish “critical” media outlets such as Sözcü TV and Halk TV concentrated on AKP’s success.
They received huge criticism for using the state-run AA’s data. AA have a tradition to inflate Erdoğan’s votes during the first hours of the vote counting.
The historic cheating was explained by CHP Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu who reminded voters that on the election night that AA showed Erdoğan’s votes 65 percent in the 2015 June elections when in fact they were actually 40 percent.
The AA again inflated Erdoğan’s votes in the November 2015 snap election, it started with 75 percent but his final tally was as low as 49 percent. Again in 2018, when Erdoğan was elected president, AA said he received 76 percent when it was 52 percent in the end.
On May 14 night, AA again first entered the data to the system from the ballot boxes where Erdoğan received the most votes. And Erdoğan’s votes have been reducing below 50 percent from over 60 percent announced by AA.
By using AA’s misleading data, The Halk TV, KRT TV and Sözcü TV channels which all are supposed to be very critical of Erdoğan’s AKP, were accused of serving Erdoğan’s tactics to demotivate the opposition voters who saw high votes for Erdoğan and left the balloting centres.
And these TV channels hosted so called critical journalists who made comments on Erdoğan’s victory hours before the announcement of the results.
Turkey’s exiled journalist Said Safa commented that the many of the so called critical names benefitting from Erdoğan’s Palace regime, manipulated the election for the People Alliance.
Another exiled journalist Cevheri Güven, said on his YouTube channel that CHP Vice Chairman Tuncay Özkan who owns KRT TV and ANKA, worked for Erdoğan on election night.
Former co-chair of thr pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas who has been imprisoned since 2016, in his tweets accused the People Alliance of vote rigging on 14 May.
Demirtas wrote that many AKP and MHP members registered themselves as the opposition party agents with the idea to change the votes to favor the People Alliance. Demirtaş claimed that Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu established the digital centre to manipulate votes.
Erdoğan is currently controlling all the state institutions and he consolidated his power in the army as he purged half of the generals. Erdoğan appointed his relative to YSK and he doesn’t need to stress the need to steal votes from ballot boxes.
The YSK easily manipulate the votes on behalf of Erdoğan. There are many claims that YSK added opposition Green Left Party’s votes to the MHP tally and increased Sinan Oğan’s votes.
Erdoğan and his alliances in key institutions will try to rig votes in the second round to keep the Palace regime and prevent CHP from turning the country back to Parliamentary system.
As local and international election observers including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported that the ruling party had an unjustified advantage by virtue of biased media coverage and restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, the second round cannot reflect the people’s democratic will.