AK Party maintains voters' support after chaotic election night

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) managed to maintain public support in a hotly contested election shadowed by allegations of fraud, power cuts and crippling cyber attacks on websites and the database of a private news agency and media outlets.

The AK Party led the polls with 46 percent of votes across Turkey, up from 38.8 percent in the last local election held in 2009, according to results available when Today's Zaman went to print. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), the top contender of the AK Party, trailed with 27 percent. Municipalities of İstanbul and Ankara, Turkey's biggest cities that have long been administered by the AK Party, were still contested when Today's Zaman went to print late Sunday night.

The vote, although held to elect mayors for districts and cities across Turkey, has been widely seen as a referendum on the rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose promise of a post-election-victory crackdown on opponents has raised fears over further authoritarianism in Turkey. The prime minister has been battling a high-level corruption investigation involving his close allies and even members of his family since Dec. 17, when dozens of people including businesspeople close to the government and sons of now-former ministers were detained on charges of rigging state tenders and other irregularities. He has suggested that a high rate of support would prove his charges that the corruption probe is nothing but a “plot” against his government by the faith-based Hizmet movement of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and its "foreign collaborators."

Given the high stakes, tension was severe throughout election day with voters of opposition parties on alert for possible irregularities and fraud attempts. There were hundreds of complaints about alleged irregularities, an overwhelming majority of which being against the AK Party. But the tensions reached an unprecedented high after the voting ended. Two main news agencies reporting updates on the vote count, the state-run Anadolu news agency and private Cihan news agency, reported significantly different outcomes in the first hours of the vote count, puzzling observers.

The confusion grew when Cihan, affiliated with the Hizmet movement, reported that it was under a major cyber attack preventing it from conveying results effectively. “We face extreme difficulties in reporting poll results. Our reporters are physically assaulted, our database targeted with massive cyber attacks,” Cihan said on its Twitter account.

Internet connection was down at Today's Zaman and its Turkish-language sister newspaper Zaman for hours as well, severely complicating reporting. Hundreds of AK Party supporters gathered in front of the headquarters of Zaman and Cihan news agency, a compound that also houses Today's Zaman, honking horns of their cars and shouting slogans in support of Erdoğan, after calls throughout the day by an anonymous pro-AK Party Twitter account to celebrate the AK Party win in front of Hizmet-affiliated Zaman.

Anadolu agency, on the other hand, had to issue a statement after it faced a flood of accusations of “manipulative” reporting. “This is a night when very ugly election manipulating is under way. Unfortunately, the state news agency Anadolu is working as the hub of this manipulation,” CHP Deputy Chairman Haluk Koç told a news conference.

There were also reports of power cuts in many provinces across Turkey as vote counting was still under way. Photos showed election officials counting votes as voting stations in candlelight in the southern province of Gaziantep.

In a sign of disarray unseen before, officials and mayoral candidates of the AK Party and the CHP appeared before cameras to declare election victory, only to be countered by representatives of rival parties.

In a press conference, CHP İstanbul Chairman Oğuz Kaan Salıcı said his party's mayoral candidate, Mustafa Sarıgül, was almost two points ahead of AK Party's Topbaş according to results obtained by the CHP, countering Anadolu figures which showed the CHP almost 10 points behind the AK Party at that time. Soon after that, AK Party İstanbul Chairman Aziz Babuşçu declared that İstanbul AK Party candidate Topbaş appeared to have won the municipality once again.

Overall, the AK Party dominated most Anatolian provinces while the CHP was again winning in its traditional stronghold of western coastal provinces. Southeastern Anatolia, on the other hand, was dominated by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).

Promise of crackdown

Even though his name was not on the ballot, Erdoğan was under the spotlight in the vote. The prime minister has repeatedly sought to present the vote result as a referendum on the corruption allegations, arguing that a favorable result would clear him of charges and prove the investigation was just a plot against his party aimed at stopping Turkey's economic development and its rise as a regional and global power.

Thousands of police officers and dozens of judges and prosecutors have been reassigned since Dec. 17 in what is believed to be an attempt to stop further investigation into the scandal. All the suspects detained on that date were subsequently released pending trial.

The hindrance of prosecution was followed by the release of dozens of voice recordings apparently incriminating not only his allies but also Erdoğan himself. The government blames the faith-based Hizmet movement of Gülen, a Turkish Islamic scholar currently residing in the US, for the release of the tapes, published by anonymous accounts on Twitter and YouTube. Both Internet platforms have been shut down over the recent weeks, sparking strong outcry at home and abroad.

Erdoğan vowed on countless occasions to crush Hizmet during his election rallies in past weeks. The threats have intensified after the leak of a recording of a highly confidential security meeting in which top officials apparently discussed a possible armed intervention in Syria. Hizmet denies any connection with the leak, which is now the subject of an espionage investigation.

Police briefly detained overnight Önder Aytaç, a former Police Academy lecturer and prominent writer who is known to be close to the Hizmet movement, on the grounds of “creating the impression” that he has known about the leak, on Friday night. Erdoğan's lawyers later asked the prosecutors to ban both Aytaç and Emre Uslu, a columnist, academic and former police official, from leaving the country as a precautionary measure

Published on Today's Zaman, 31 March 2014, Monday