Main opposition the Republican People’s Party (CHP) on Wednesday submitted a request to Turkey’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) to cancel last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections as well as the March 31 local polls across all Istanbul districts.
The request was made by CHP Deputy Chairman Muharrem Erkek who argued that non-civil servants had also supervised those ballots. The appeal comes in the wake of YSK’s decision to cancel and renew the March 31 metropolitan municipal elections over irregularities.
The CHP, however, cannot appeal the electoral board’s decision to repeat the mayoral election as it is final.
“If you say that the local election was stained, then the same is valid for the June 24 (2018) elections,” Erkek told reporters after formally submitting the appeal. “Ten thousands of people who were not civil servants were on duty at the June 24 elections.”
“If you cancel Mr. Imamoglu’s mandate, then you have to cancel Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s mandate too,” Erkek said, addressing the electoral board members. He added that there was no evidence to prove that the presence of non-civil servants at the ballot stations had affected the outcome of the voting.
Voters cast four different votes in the March 31 elections, electing district administrators, mayors, municipal councils, and local officials. Of those four votes, the YSK ruled to annul only the Istanbul mayoral result.
The renewed mayoral election will be held on June 23. The YSK said its decision to annul the polls was based on unsigned result documents from the election and on some ballot box officials not being civil servants.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that the elections were marred by “organized irregularity” and added that the decision was an important step towards strengthening democracy.
The YSK has yet to publish its detailed decision with a reasoning.
The March 31 elections witnessed a very close race between the People’s Alliance candidate Binali Yıldırım and the Nation Alliance candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. According to unofficial results, İmamoğlu led the polls by almost 13,000 votes in Istanbul where nearly 10 million citizens cast their votes.
