High turnout of Turkish voters in Switzerland

The turnout of Turkish voters in Switzerland in this year’s presidential election was 56.7 percent, the Turkish embassy in Bern reported Friday. This is the highest turnout ever in Switzerland.

In 2018, this was still 49.5 percent. Yet the number is far below the value in Turkey, the embassy writes. In Turkey, for example, 86.24 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.

According to the embassy, ​​polling stations in Bern, Zurich and Geneva were open until May 7 for the 2023 elections. According to the embassy, ​​which relies on figures from Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council, there are 105,820 Turkish voters registered in Switzerland.

A total of 64 million voters in Turkey and around the world would be called to the polls in elections similar to a referendum against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan 2018 in Switzerland on top

In the 2018 presidential election in Switzerland, Erdogan had won 37.2 percent of the vote, compared to 31.9 percent for the social-democratic CHP candidate Muharrem Ince and 27.5 percent for the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) candidate Selahattin Demirtas. However, Ince withdrew his candidacy for the 2023 election on Friday.

At the time, the president of the Fédération des Associations Turques de Suisse Romande (FATSR), Celâl Bayar, assessed Erdogan’s result as “poor”.

In the parliamentary elections, Erdogan’s Islamist conservative AKP received a total of 31.3 percent of the vote from Turks in Switzerland and was overtaken by the HDP with 40.8 percent. The CHP, founded by the father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, got 17.29 percent. (oo/sda)