Observers do not expect any problems in Turkey’s elections

Independent observers do not expect major problems in Turkey’s parliamentary and presidential elections in about five weeks.

He does not share concerns about electoral fraud, Ertim Orkun, chairman of the independent observer organization Oy ve Ötesi (votes and more), told the DPA news agency on Tuesday. “The security of the election is in our hands,” he said. If there are observers at every ballot box to monitor the process, he sees no room for fraud.

The organization has already signed up 25,000 volunteers from all 81 provinces of the country to observe the elections. The goal is 100,000 observers. In addition, the parties send representatives. The situation is most difficult in the earthquake zones, where people choose to vote because of the destruction under difficult conditions, Orkun said.

The earthquake in early February killed more than 50,000 people and an unknown number of people are still missing. He estimates the odds of other people voting instead of missing out, as many feared, as “low,” Orkun said. Finally, the identity card must be shown.

Rüstü Tiryaki, representative of the pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP to the electoral authority, made a similar statement. In this way, fraud is possible in theory, but difficult to implement in practice, he says to the dpa. About 100,000 affected people in the earthquake zones had registered to vote in other provinces. Hundreds of thousands have left the earthquake zone. It is unclear how many of them will return to their home regions for the May 14 elections.

After the last elections in 2018, election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) criticized that the candidates were not given the same opportunities. The government controls much of the media. Since an amendment to the electoral law, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can also use state resources, such as official vehicles and state banquets during the election campaign. (sda/dpa)