Turkey: OSCE to observe presidential elections in Turkey

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) parliamentarians will travel to Turkey next week to observe the upcoming presidential elections and provide leadership for the OSCE’s short-term observer mission, the group announced on Tuesday. The OSCE delegation, which includes more than 20 parliamentarians from 15 participating OSCE states, will be led by Asa Lindestam, chair of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s General Committee on Political Affairs and Security. On Aug. 10, for the first time voters will go to polling stations to elect the next president by popular vote. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, a second round will be held for the two top candidates on Aug. 24.

Turkey: Expats not keen on voting abroad | Hurriyet Daily

Turkish citizens living abroad have not been rushing to the ballot box for Turkey’s presidential elections, as only a small number of citizens have obtained an appointment to cast their vote. In the past, Turks living abroad could vote in polling stations at border gates. But on average, only 7 percent of the 2.6 million potential overseas voters voted in previous elections. With recent changes to the Election Law, however, the overseas electorate can vote at embassies, consulates and other designated areas in their country of residence between July 31 and Aug. 3. However, the amendment failed to significantly raise the expatriate voter turnout as only around 180,000 Turkish national have registered to vote overseas. A majority of the more than 2.7 million eligible voters living abroad may not be able to cast ballots in the presidential elections as they failed to make an appointment to vote through the website of the High Election Board (YSK).

Turkey: Voters in Europe | Today’s Zaman

For the first time in Turkey’s history, Turkish citizens who live in a foreign country will be able to vote in the elections. Turkey’s envoy to Berlin says that the number of voters is 3 million. This is a significant number given that it corresponds with 7 percent of the total number of voters, and the winner is determined by a small margin in the second round of the presidential elections. Unfortunately, we are not well prepared for these elections, which will take place abroad for the first time. I believe that there will be many problems in how the election is handled and carried out. Half of the voters in Europe live in Germany (1.4 million). Five hundred ballot boxes are reserved for these voters. It appears that there will be 3,000 voters for each box, the voters will have to sign up for a time to vote and the boxes will be stationed in predominantly Turkish areas.

Turkey: Challengers Claim Media Bias in Turkey’s Presidential Campaign | VoA News

With less than a month before the Turkish people go to the polls to elect a president for the first time in their history, a dispute has broken out on the disproportionate amount of media coverage Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been receiving on public television as opposed to the other two candidates. Turkey’s first popular presidential election is mired in controversy over its fairness. Both of the rivals of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the August presidential election are crying foul. Selahattin Demirtas, candidate for the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, is accusing Turkey’s state broadcaster TRT of blatant bias favoring Prime Minister Erdogan.

Turkey: Erdogan To Run In First Direct Presidential Election | Eurasia Review

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister for the last 11 years and an increasingly authoritarian and polarising figure, will, as expected, run in the country’s first direct election for the presidency on 10 August. No one expects him to lose, least of all Erdogan himself. His Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won the last six general and local elections. He faces a term limit as prime minister next year. Erdogan will run against Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the former head of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, who is the joint candidate of the two biggest opposition parties, the centre-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP), established by Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, and the right-wing National Action Party (MHP), and Selahattin Demirtas, a pro-Kurdish politician. By uniting under one candidate, the CHP and the MHP, which represent the secularist elite, hope to narrow the distance with the AKP.

Turkey: Opposition fears power grab as Erdoğan stands for presidency | The Guardian

Turkey’s worst-kept political secret was revealed when the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) announced that the current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, will be its official candidate to become the country’s next president. Six weeks ahead of the country’s first direct presidential elections, the AKP announced Erdoğan’s candidacy on Tuesday to a cheering crowd of party members. Erdoğan’s nomination, kept under wraps until Tuesday, has long been rumoured among political analysts and the media. The nomination was revealed at an extravagant and emotionally charged event in the capital, Ankara, where the prime minister’s long-time political ally Mehmet Ali Şahin, former parliamentary speaker and justice minister, addressed a more than 4,000 party members. Şahin stressed that the decision had been unanimous. “In order to designate a presidential candidate, at least 20 signatures of party MPs are needed,” he said. “We were able to gather all signatures of all our [party MPs].”

Turkey: Vote Results Draw Scrutiny | VoA News

The recent elections in Turkey are under increased scrutiny, with results being challenged across the country not only by political parties, but also, for the first time, by non-partisan groups and individuals. Riot police using water cannon and tear gas dispersed protesters calling for an investigation into the local election results in the capital Ankara. Along with opposition parties, non-partisan pressure groups and individuals are contesting the fairness of some of the races. Soli Ozel, a political columnist for the Turkish newspaper Haberturk, says the country is witnessing a new development – citizen empowerment. “It’s very important: people are owning up to their votes and for the first time there is this great sensitivity. Their are a lot of people who consistently bicker on the Internet, saying: ‘Oh how awful these things are.’ Other people are basically taking matters into their own hands; we have not seen this before,” said Ozel.

Turkey: ‘No Opposition, No Democracy’ in Turkey’s elections | The Washington Post

After local elections on March 30, Turkish opposition figures are up in arms, claiming to have incontrovertible evidence of widespread voting fraud and calling into question the institutional integrity of Turkey’s electoral system for the first time in recent history. While criticized for many other democratic deficiencies since the establishment of the republic in 1923, Turkey has generally been recognized by the international community as holding free and fair elections. The majoritarian victories and even consistent electoral gains of the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, or AKP) over the last three general elections were accepted as legitimate. Unprecedented as they were, these election wins were understood mainly as approval of the tangible benefits available to AKP supporters during Turkey’s period of sustained economic growth and general political apathy or lack of a credible alternative among its opposition rather than as any kind of electoral foul play.

Turkey: Premier Gains Ground in Turkish Elections | Wall Street Journal

Turkey’s prime minister appeared to have scored a decisive victory in local elections seen as a referendum on his rule over an increasingly divided country, setting the stage for a possible run for president. Exit polls showed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, winning a comfortable plurality of votes nationally, but the margin of victory and his party’s control of major cities was unclear early Monday. Two polls showed the party registering 46% of the vote with 80% of the ballots counted, with the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, securing 28%. In Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, and the capital, Ankara—the most closely watched and influential constituencies—both the government and the opposition claimed victory and accused each another of fraud. The AKP appeared to have held Istanbul but the final results in Ankara were still unclear at midnight.

Turkey: Volunteer Anti-Fraud Army Prepares for Local Elections | Businessweek

At least 25,000 election monitors are planning to fan out across Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, to prevent fraud during local elections on March 30 as governing and opposition parties warn of ballot rigging. A civil movement called “Vote and Beyond” is mobilizing the volunteers to monitor and provide evidence to political parties if they fall victim to possible irregularities, said Sercan Celebi, a spokesman for the movement said by phone today. Other monitors plan to work in the second city, Ankara.

Turkey: Citizens have right to monitor elections for fraud-free voting, says activist | Today’s Zaman

Selen Gülün is a mayoral candidate who seeks no votes! A successful musician, she is a candidate for mayor for the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality, just because a civil society initiative wants to monitor the election process to make sure that there is no vote rigging on the March 30 local elections, and the only way for doing it was to show a mayoral candidate. “I’ve become an independent candidate for mayor of İstanbul. Of course, I seek no votes, and I’ve also become a volunteer for the ‘Sandık Başındayız’ [Ballot Watch], so I will work on March 30 to monitor the voting process,” says Gülün. Başındayız reminds us that there is a dire need for independent civil society organizations in Turkey’s highly polarized environment. Their survival and growth would mean that Turkish society deserves to exercise full citizenship rights in a pluralistic setting.

Turkey: European observers: Turkish elections are well-managed and democratic | Trend

Turkey’s well-managed, democratic elections demonstrated pluralism but also showed a need for improvements on fundamental freedoms, according to international election observers from the Parliamentary Assemblies of the OSCE and Council of Europe.

“To fully live up to its democratic commitments, Turkey must do more than run efficient professional elections on the day of the vote,” said Pia Christmas-Moeller (Denmark), head of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation.

“The ten per cent threshold, by far the highest in Europe, remains a central issue in these elections,” said Kerstin Lundgren (Sweden), head of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegation.

Turkey: Prime Ministry working to enable Turkish expats to vote | World Bulletin

The Prime Ministry’s Overseas Turks Agency (TYB) has begun working on making it possible for around 2.5 million Turkish expats to vote in Turkey’s elections. In March, the Supreme Election Board (YSK) announced that Turkish expatriates can only vote in the general elections at customs gates, causing displeasure among Turks in many countries.

Only about 10 percent of Turkey’s 2.5 million expats make the effort to go to the border to cast their vote. The YSK said it cannot allow electronic voting at Turkish missions abroad because the infrastructure for it is not yet in place.

Turkey: Is digital voting possible in Turkey? | Hurriyet Dailt News

With election day approaching, it is the right time to discuss digital voting. Traditionally, millions of Turkish citizens go to a physical location where they stamp their votes on paper, enclose it within an envelope and drop it in a closed box, which is later opened and counted by previously assigned people. They also get…