Periodic and genuine, free and fair elections were, once, the pride of Turkey.<\/p>\n
The 16 April 2017 constitutional referendum, described by international election observers, as an \u201cunlevel playing field\u201d, put an end to it. It undermined the trust in the integrity and credibility of the electoral process.<\/p>\n
Not only \u201cthe two sides of the campaign did not have equal opportunities<\/a>,\u201d but by changing the ballot validity criteria while voting was underway, Turkey\u2019s High Electoral Board removed an important safeguard, in contradiction of the country\u2019s election law.<\/p>\n The OSCE<\/a> and Council of Europe<\/a> criticised Turkey for not living up to international standards. \u00a0President Erdo\u011fan rejected the criticism and told the observers to \u201cknow their place\u201d. \u201cTurkey would continue down its own road\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n A draft bill on new electoral regulations that was submitted to Parliament on 21st<\/sup> February this year, made it very clear where this road might be heading.<\/p>\n In the April 2017 referendum, one of the main concerns was about a decision by the electoral commission to count ballots which did not carry an official stamp.<\/p>\n The draft bill formalizes this illegal practice by allowing unstamped ballot papers to be valid in future elections.<\/p>\n Under the proposed changes, the High Electoral Board would also be given the authority to merge electoral districts and move ballot boxes.<\/p>\n At polling stations, presiding officers and poll clerks will be government appointed civil servants and electoral observation by representatives of political parties will \u00a0be limited.<\/p>\n Due to \u201csecurity concerns\u201d, law enforcement officials will monitor voting process closely, by being present inside the polling stations.<\/p>\n Opposition parties say that these proposed changes would open the door to election fraud, undermine the security and integrity of the electoral process and make it easier to interfere with ballot materials and counting.<\/p>\n In addition, the recent release of Turkey\u2019s genealogy database<\/a> revealed widespread discrepancies. Many families were surprised to see their long-deceased relatives registered as alive on official records.<\/p>\n Lawyer Haluk Peksen, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party \u00a0has claimed<\/a> that opening these records to public before upcoming elections pointed to possible election fraud by encouraging government supporters to use dead people\u2019s identities to vote.<\/p>\n As well as taking legislative and institutional steps for the management of elections, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has formally agreed to an electoral alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).<\/p>\n Described<\/a> by the Republican People\u2019s Party deputy leader Haluk Ko\u00e7 as \u201cdevil\u2019s bargain\u201d, \u00a0this fateful alliance may well be a sign of insecurity for the AKP- \u00a0a \u201charsh reality of electoral mathematics\u201d, as the British daily the Financial Times put<\/a> it; or as many suspect, yet another hardball tactic by the governing party on the electoral road to breakdown.<\/p>\n It is not the first time the government has been told that it did not live up to standards; and it responded by changing the rules of the game instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Periodic and genuine, free and fair elections were, once, the pride of Turkey. The 16 April 2017 constitutional referendum, described by international election observers, as an \u201cunlevel playing field\u201d, put an end to it. It undermined the trust in the integrity and credibility of the electoral process. Not only \u201cthe two sides of the campaign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29286,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29283\/revisions\/29286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}