The number of troops who were brought into the city of Kars (Qers) in Turkey to vote in the 31 March elections was allegedly at least 3,500, more than the number of votes that enabled a far-right party to win.
The Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) on Friday re-applied for a repeat of the elections in Turkey’s eastern city of Kars, where about one tenth of the votes cast in the local election on Sunday were cast by non-residents, mostly soldiers and police officers brought in for the vote by state authorities.
The DEM Party received 13,120 votes against the far-right Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) 16,384 votes. The number of votes cast by non-residents is 3,842, according to DEM Party officials, more than the difference between the two parties’ votes.
The party submitted an official demand to the provincial election board for renewed elections after its former application to the district election board was quickly rejected.
The DEM Party had previously won the local election in 2019, but the mayor was quickly removed and replaced with a state-appointed official by the Turkish Interior Ministry over spurious terrorism allegations that were never backed or concluded by any legal process.
The chair of the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) local branch, Onur Ulutaşdemir, said that the objection they filed with the provincial election board was rejected and that more recently they re-applied to the Supreme Election Board (YSK) for a review, but their application was again rejected.
Ulutaşdemir added that they identified 3,501 people who were brought into the city to vote, and that the Defence Ministry said that they were troops dispatched to the area to take part in the “winter exercise” of the Turkish military.
Similarly, the DEM Party’s application for a vote recount in the Kurdish-majority city of Bitlis (Bedlîs) was rejected on Thursday by the district election board. The difference between the votes of the DEM Party and the winning Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the district is a mere 198, while more than 2,000 votes have been invalidated.
