Electoral fraud?

İhsan Yılmaz

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned the 30 March local elections into a sort of referendum.

This seems to have two aspects. First, Erdoğan asserts that if his party is first in the elections, this means that he and his party are cleared of any corruption. Second, if his party receives about 40 percent of the vote, this will mean that the people approve of his war against the Hizmet movement. As a matter of fact, a few days ago Deputy Prime Minister Emrullah Isler stated that if the people give them a sufficient mandate and power in the local elections, they are adamant that they will finish off the Hizmet movement. From another perspective, these elections are so crucial and vital for Erdoğan because other than electoral power, nothing can save him from the very serious and concrete corruption investigations. He is only safe if he can continue to stop the judicial process. He knows very well that he does not have many staunch supporters in the police, military, judiciary and so on that will break the law to protect him.

All in all, these local elections are vital for him, and he seems to be ready to do anything to win the elections. Telling lies and attacking innocent people with libelous words every day are some of these tactics. To win the hearts of his practicing Muslim voters, he has repeatedly told very obvious lies. He claimed that the Gezi Park protestors had consumed alcohol and done other illicit things in a mosque and he stated that he had video footage of these terrible acts. So far, no one has seen such footage, and the charges against Gezi protestors do not even mention these acts. Erdoğan also claimed that in Kabataş, the headscarf-wearing daughter-in-law of a Justice and Development Party (AKP) mayor and her baby had been attacked, including by urinating on her, kicking her baby and sexually abusing her (see Elif Cakir's interview with the woman in the Star daily for the pornographic details), by over 100 semi-naked Gezi protestors. He, his deputies and some journalists claimed to have seen this video footage. An AKP deputy even claimed that if they showed the video footage to the public, there would be a public furor.

A few weeks ago, the video footage was actually leaked. The woman is seen in the footage. A crowd pauses for a few seconds in front of her, and it seems that they exchange some bad words and so on, but there is no physical attack. The crowd then moves on. Then her husband arrives and they get in a car and leave. To cut a long story short, in order to win his political fights, Erdoğan can easily distort the truth and tell terrible and very harmful lies. Given that these elections are extremely vital for him, I would not be surprised if he or some of his men resorted to electoral fraud and rigging. There are indeed some rumors and allegations to this effect.

While some AKP opponents claim that the party will try to distort the calculation of the vote, others claim that the counted ballots will be replaced at night with pro-AKP ballots. They state that even though there are about 50 million voters in Turkey, 140 million ballot papers have been printed. On the other hand, some AKP people claim that the Hizmet movement has some bureaucrats in the Supreme Election Board (YSK) and these bureaucrats might resort to fraud. This also suggests that if the AKP cannot get its desired share of the vote and cannot rig the elections, it will refuse to accept the results on the basis that the results have been distorted by the Hizmet movement.

As the ruling party, the AKP needs to prevent these allegations from coming true. The best way to do this is to make sure that the elections, including the counting, calculation and storage of the counted ballots, are 100 percent transparent. News agencies must be allowed to record the counting of every ballot box. They must also be able to show the signed documents of the ballot box results. In the age of smart phones, a video recording of each ballot box must be made. The trucks that carry the counted ballots must be escorted by party representatives, and in the offices where they are kept until the elections results are declared, CCTV cameras and active-duty personnel must be present at all times.

Published on Today's Zaman, 19 March 2014, Wednesday