The opposition parties have begun to raise their voices against numerous irregularities in the Turkish elections last Sunday. However, they acknowledge that they are not systematic, so they do not speak of fraud, no matter how much, according to what they say, the "errors" always occurred in favor of the bloc that supports the government.
This Wednesday, the Republican People's Party (CHP) speaks of "7,094 ballot boxes affected" (3.5% of the total), of which "4,825 in the legislative and 2,269 in the presidential", which were voted on simultaneously. "Sometimes it is a single ballot, sometimes 10 and sometimes 100. Rest assured, we are going to protect every vote," said Muharrem Erkek, the CHP's head of electoral affairs.
The ice broke this Tuesday, as expected, in the southeast of Turkey, with a Kurdish majority, where the most brazen exchanges apparently took place.
The Kurdish movement denounces at least three instances in which hundreds of votes for its political front were attributed in their entirety to the far-right partner of the government, MHP, despite the fact that, according to the minutes signed by the proxies and auditors, no one had given them. voted. The fraud, therefore, would not have occurred in the count, but in the introduction of the results in the database of the scrutiny.
Said scrutiny, when it was communicated yesterday to the political parties and later, when it became public domain, has allowed numerous "errors" to be brought to light.
The electoral manager of the pro-Kurdish formation, Mehmet Rüştü Tiryaki, says that "the results of more than a thousand ballot boxes were incorrectly entered into the system." He also admitted that "almost all of our objections were met and mistakes were corrected." "Is it an organized crime? Since we don't have proof at the moment, we will consider it an erroneous introduction." It is the case that the initials of the MHP appeared in the table exactly below those of the Green Left, the name of the occasion with which the candidates of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Party of the Peoples (HDP) have concurred.
In the case of the presidential elections, the possible deviation has not avoided the need to dirim the elections in a second round, between Recep Tayyip Erdogan (AKP-Popular Alliance) and Kemal Kiliçaroglu (CHP-National Alliance).
According to the number two of the neoliberal DEVA party, a member of the latter alliance, "we do not have consistent evidence that the irregularities could have changed the sign of the presidential elections or the allocation of seats."
The second round of the presidential elections, which will be won by the candidate with the most votes, will therefore pit the current head of state (and government) against the head of the opposition. Erdogan won the first round with a two and a half million advantage, which has forced Kiliçdaroglu to bring out the most nationalist and xenophobic face of Kemalism to try to attract voters for the ultra-eliminated candidate.
"We will not abandon our homeland to a mentality that has allowed ten million irregular immigrants to get us in," says the Social Democratic politician in a video posted on Twitter, in which he also warns that their number could reach "thirty million." In reality, the figure normally considered is between 4 and 5 million, most of them Syrian. "Those who love their country, go vote," he urged.
The candidate will meet today with the other five leaders of the National Alliance to define a strategy for the second round, which seems to have taken him by surprise. According to the Turkish media, one of the decisions already taken within his party (CHP) is to give more weight in his team to the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, and the woman who led him to victory in the mayoralty, Canan Kaftancioglu.
