Ahead of the second round in Turkey, chief election observer demands equal opportunities Jewel thieves from Dresden must be behind bars for several years

Before the first second round of presidential elections in Turkey’s history, the coordinator of OSCE and Council of Europe election observation missions called for more equal opportunities. The mistake that the government side is clearly favored in the media should not be repeated, said Michael Link (FDP) in the Tagesspiegel (Tuesday). Incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan and opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu will face each other in the second round of elections on May 28.

According to the provisional final result, Erdogan received the most votes in the presidential election on Sunday and thus won. However, he narrowly missed the required absolute majority of more than 50 percent. Challenger Kilicdaroglu was at least five percentage points short. Erdogan, 69, has been in power for 20 years. Polls had predicted an exciting race.

The elections took place under very unequal conditions: Erdogan and his AKP control most of the country’s media. In fact, their interpretation of things is much more common. There were also major disparities between the government and the opposition in the distribution of voting money.

It is the first time in Turkey’s history that there will be a second round for the presidency. In less than two weeks, Germany’s 61 million voters will once again be called upon to make their mark on one of the two candidates. The 3.4 million voters abroad also have to go to the polls again.

There are still no official predictions about who has the best chances. Decisive will be, among other things, how voters decide on third-placed Sinan Ogan of the ultra-nationalist Ata-AllianzOgan, who will not advance to the second round. It also depends on how many voters Kilicdaroglu can mobilize again after the disappointment of an initial quasi-defeat, which came as a surprise to many of his supporters.

Regarding the first round of elections, Link said there were irregularities, not so much on election day itself, but during the election campaign leading up to it. “This election was marked by a very high profile presence of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the media, and consistently positive. Opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, on the other hand, had great difficulty getting into the media. If he succeeded, it was mostly negative,” said Link.

So far, his team has not found any errors in the count “in the sense of manipulation or falsification,” Link said. The “very opaque way in which the highest electoral authority presents the results” urgently needs to be improved.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitors the elections “to assess the extent to which the electoral processes are characterized by equality, universality, political pluralism, trust, transparency and accountability, while respecting fundamental freedoms”.

There are no provisional final results for the election of parliament yet. According to the state news agency Anadolu, the alliance around Erdogan still has the majority. It is expected to have fewer seats than in the previous term of office, but an absolute majority. Parliament has been seriously dismantled under Erdogan. Still, the AKP could use its majority there to block Kilicdaroglu if he wins the second round.

Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock acknowledged the high turnout of almost 89 percent in the presidential election. Turkish voters not only exercised their democratic right to vote, but with a very high turnout, the Greens politician said on Monday during a visit to the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah. “It shows in a remarkable way how strongly they stand up for their democratic processes.”

Meanwhile, the president of the Kurdish community in Germany, Ali Ertan Toprak, criticized the voting behavior of the Turks who were allowed to vote in Germany. “The people who enjoy democracy here support an autocracy in Turkey,” he told the editorial network Germany (RND/Tuesday). “It is also a problem for Germany.” The election results were disappointing. “National Islamic ideology has won. And Erdogan is the favorite in the second round. I don’t see anything good for the next few years.” According to the latest figures, Erdogan accounted for almost two-thirds of the votes cast by Turks in Germany.

The German-Turkish parliamentary group also reacted soberly to the provisional results of the presidential elections. Chairman Max Lucks (Greens) told the “Rheinische Post” (Tuesday): “Hopes for a result that could strengthen democracy and the rule of law again were not translated into election results.” He looks with concern at the ongoing disinformation campaigns that Erdogan presented as the winner despite continuous counts. “All this worries me greatly, because the government camp clearly has no interest in a fair election campaign.” Lucks had traveled to Turkey as an election observer for the Council of Europe. (oee/sda/dpa)