The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) emphasized that it is pursuing allegations of voting irregularities in the March 31 elections, while closely following the post-election period activities of the country’s top election body so the ultimate result reflects the people’s will.
“Currently, the votes difference [in Istanbul] has decreased to 16,442 from 29,000,” AK Party Deputy Chairman Ali İhsan Yavuz said yesterday, referring to the process of recounting invalid votes and investigating irregularities in the elections. Yavuz added that they would resort to asking the election board to recount all votes in all districts of Istanbul to completely clear suspicions concerning the election.
AK Party spokesperson Ömer Çelik also told reporters yesterday that the appeal process continues and the party sees the Supreme Election Council (YSK) as the sole authority to decide definite results in the elections. “After all elections in Turkey, political parties object [to results] and the YSK decides on results. Regardless of the outcome, we will respect the result declared by the YSK,” Çelik said. On March 31, millions of Turkish voters cast votes in the local elections to choose Turkey’s mayors, city council members, mukhtars (neighborhood officials) and members of elder councils for the next five years. The appeal and objection process followed Election Day as many parties were determined to exhaust all appeals and move the election results to the YSK in some other election districts.
Touching upon the performance of his party, Çelik said: “The turnout was 85%, which is historic. The People’s Alliance got 52% of votes, while the AK Party got 45% of the votes. This is an election where we ranked first for the 15th time.”
Appeal process continues in Istanbul
The contentious objection process in Istanbul, the commercial capital and the most populous city in Turkey, continues as invalid votes in all Istanbul districts are being recounted, while all votes are being reassessed in four districts.
Muharrem Erek, deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP), announced yesterday on his official media account that the difference between CHP candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu and AK Party candidate Binali Yıldırım had been reduced to 17,111.
The unofficial results showed İmamoğlu leading in the mayoral race in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality against Yıldırım, who was deemed the favorite by many in the race ahead of the elections, by a small margin of about 22,000 votes. There were 10,570,939 eligible voters, and voter turnout was 83.88 percent.
As a result, following application to district election boards, the AK Party Istanbul provincial organization applied Friday to the Istanbul provincial election board for a total recount of all votes cast in the province in the local elections.
Not only Istanbul but also objection and appeal processes have been initiated throughout the country while some processes have been completed in certain districts. In western Kırklareli province, the YSK, the highest authority evaluating objections regarding elections, announced on Saturday that independent candidate Mehmet Kesimoğlu had been elected as mayor of Kırklareli after assessing the objections of the AK Party and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). According to definite results, Kesimoğlu garnered 37.48 percent of the votes, while the MHP had 36.94 percent of the votes.
Meanwhile, AK Party objections in the Babadağ district of Denizli where the party lost by 15 votes and far-right Good Party (İP) objections in Denizli’s Balkan district where the party lost by 7 votes were rejected by the district election boards.
On Friday, the provincial election board decided to re-count 5 out of 154 ballot boxes; however, the re-evaluation only changed 1 vote. In relation to the issue, Akın highlighted that a change of 1 vote only proved that he is the mayor elected by the will of people.
