Supporters of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its far-right ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) could be posing as members of opposition parties to infiltrate ballot committees, making it impossible to detect fraud at local levels, jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş said via his lawyers.
“The most important piece of evidence is the counting reports that are signed by ballot committee chairs and political party representatives. If there are no objections to the reports, votes are sealed in a bag that will never be opened again to be counted again,” Demirtaş said.
The former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair’s “estimates on how they stole elections for years and hijacked the country” are as follows:
“But what if those signing up for ballot committees were truly AKP-MHP supporters posing as representatives from opposition parties? Then everybody on the committee, including the chair, would be pro-government.
“And if no observers are present during the vote count, they can write up the report however they see fit and sign in the name of Green Left Party (YSP), Republican People’s Party (CHP), or Good Party (İYİP). Nobody objects to the report, they each take a signed copy to the parties’ headquarters.
“Opposition parties trust the reports brought to them, so they don’t object either. They register reports in their systems. This way, data from the electoral board and ballot reports appear in harmony, nobody can figure out where fraud happened.
“State-run Anadolu Agency starts with a high percentage for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, feeding the idea that he won for sure. The fraudulent reports are not entered into the official system at first, they just slow down data entry to wait and see if the opposition has any evidence of fraud, if they will object.
“When it is clear that the opposition failed to catch the fraud, and that they won’t object to faked ballots, the doctored reports are promptly entered and data flow begins again. This way, everything appears legal and proper. It is now impossible to catch the fraud.
“There is a central digital base for this, headed by Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu. In the Black Sea region and central Anatolia in particular, this operation has been in force for years.
“If they manage to steal 150 votes from 20,000 ballots, the three million votes would be enough to turn the election over.
“The only way to prevent this is:
A) District administrations that dole out duties must never authorise anybody they do not know and do not trust,
B) In every ballot there must be at least two observers apart from the official ballot officer,
“C) All citizens must return to their ballots at the time of counting, watch it happen, take notes, and make sure the reports are written up correctly. They must make videos of the counting process and the final report, photos of the reports must be uploaded to a website that is available to all of the public.
“Erdoğan has been winning elections using this method for years, and keeping MHP at about 10 percent. It is certain that there are other ways of fraud happening, but unfortunately we cannot know those. All this is to say, the elections will be won for certain if you all merely protect your ballots. Do not give up.”
YSP and CHP have separately filed objections for hundreds of ballots based on the reports they have collected via their representatives. While the time for objections will run out on Wednesday, the Supreme Board of Elections announced that objections based on discrepancies in reports will be able to be filed after the time is up.
Some 55 million voters voted turned up at more than 190,000 stations on Sunday, resulting in 87 percent participation. AKP and MHP collectively won 49.46 percent of the parliamentary vote, while Erdoğan himself won 49.5 percent in the presidential run. As both incumbent Erdoğan and challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu failed to win 50 percent majority, a second round will be held on 28 May. The opposition, united behind Kılıçdaroğlu for the presidency and in two main alliances for the parliament, is both preparing for the presidential runoff and submitting various objections that could shift the seat distribution in their favour.
