Leendert Verbeek, former President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (CoE), spoke to activist, writer and Medya News contributor, Sarah Glynn, about insights gained from observing Turkey’s recent local elections on a CoE delegation.
During the conversation, which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, he was very critical about the over arching situation – the lack of press freedom, biased public broadcasting, the imprisonment of journalists and politicians, abuse of the definition of terrorism; and he was very concerned about developments following the election – the repetition in Van (Wan) of the disqualifying of Kurdish mayors that we saw after the elections of 2019, and the risk of a repeat of the imposition of trustees. However, his response to the Election Day itself remains disconcertingly upbeat, reflecting the message of the press statement made by the delegation’s leader on Monday.
Disconcertingly upbeat, because, for weeks the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party has made accusations of manipulation of voter lists, pointing to an incident in which soldiers were brought into key Kurdish-Majority regions from other areas in order to influence the vote in favour of the ruling Justice and Development Party and Nationalist Movement Party (AKP-MHP) alliance.
This incident was not mentioned in the CoE delegation’s press statement, and Verbeek was clear that although it “may be true” they saw nothing themselves and so couldn’t comment. He explained that neutrality required that they choose polling stations to visit at random – which sounds superficially fair, until one considers what a very small proportion of all the country’s polling station their group of politicians was able to see. The DEM Party had provided a list of addresses where hundreds or thousands of new names had been added to the voting lists, but none of these places appears to have been visited, or the lists inspected. Clearly the delegation could not take DEM Party’s list on trust, but it would not have been difficult for them to confirm the information given them. Simply as an academic researcher, I find this omission deeply troubling.
However the delegation will continue to follow what is happening, and their final report will ensure that this is “put on the agenda in 46 [Council of Europe] member states”.
– Sarah Glynn
A full transcript of the interview is provided below.
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Part I, 2 April 2024
Dem baş, I’m Sarah Glynn for Medya News, and I’m very pleased to have with me today Leendert Verbeek, who is just back from being on the delegation of the election observation mission of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, a congress of which he was recently president. So, very pleased to have you here, Leendert, thanks very much for coming.
It’s all my pleasure.
So, a very first question, actually, before we get onto the meat of it, perhaps, that the preliminary report from the delegation says that one of the members was not granted accreditation. Can you say what happened and what was the excuse given for that?
Well, to be honest, we are very surprised. It was a Swiss member, it is a Swiss member who had no connection with Turkey, neither with the Kurdish people or other groups in Turkey, and we did not really get an argument for it. So, it’s not clear. She’s just refused, and I have had no reports on the arguments. We asked for the arguments, but they were not given to me.
Okay, we can’t really say more than that, then can we?
No, it’s very strange. It never happened before in election observations that I know of in the Congress, so it’s a very strange situation. It just happened. We are not very happy about it, of course, but it is as it is.
So, going on to, actually, the report and your reactions. So, it was very good to see that the preliminary report stresses that for democratic elections, it’s not just about what happens on the day, but they need to take place with freedom of expression and with an independent judiciary, and also that that report raises concerns that the elected representatives should not later be replaced by government-appointed trustees, as has happened previously. But what can the Council of Europe and the Congress actually do to move Turkey towards a more democratic path, and especially to stop the appointment of trustees?
Yes, there are several. You raise a lot of points, so I’ll address a few of them. As observers, of course, we have to look objectively to what happens in Turkey: and we make a difference, what you might call the preparation time, the period before the election itself. We look to the election itself. Was it technically done well? Was it honest? Was there fraud or whatever? And we will also look what happens after the election, the period, and the different topics you mentioned concern all these three periods. If I go back to the recent election, if we look to the stations, we visited almost 140 polling stations. Then, in the main line, we conclude that the day itself functioned rather well. The teams were well trained. They did their job well. We’ve seen some chaotic situations, especially concerning also the election of the Mukhtars. The Mukhtars have their own culture, maybe I should say, bring their own culture in the polling station, and that’s sometimes conflicted with the formal part of it.
Sorry, just to explain to listeners what the Mukhtars are, so these are the local neighbourhood or village headmen, yes?
Yes, they are.
It’s another election that’s really going on in parallel that’s separate.
Yes, but they made their own rules, and that conflicted sometimes with the formal rules, but not in a way, it was not so excessive that it influenced the outcome of the formal elections. The special thing, of course, is that because in most polling stations everything went well and the outcome is clear, and the outcome is maybe different than some people may have wished or the other way around, this kind of democracy is possible in Turkey, and that’s what they made clear.
At the same time, we’ve seen that in the period towards the election, we have some critics to give. For instance, we believe that the public broadcast system did not meet its obligations to provide impartial coverage, and so some parties were more privileged than others, while we think that the public broadcast system should be neutral in this, and there are many examples like these, so the equality between the different parties fighting for their position was not really guaranteed, and that made it difficult, even though the outcome shows that the ones who were privileged, it was not always to their advantage, but as a Council of Europe, we look very critical to that kind of thing. Also, the topics you mentioned, that elected persons sometimes quite soon get put in prison and replaced by trustees who were not chosen, if there are good reasons to remove, for instance, a mayor because of corruption or whatever, then we think that a new mayor should be elected from the City Council who represents the chosen people, but quite often this is not done, and the trustee is a questionable system in the eyes of the Council of Europe.
And a very specific question, actually, of something that happened both before and on the day, and a specific question from the DEM Party, the pro-Kurdish leftist DEM Party, so the DEM Party warned beforehand that voting lists in key Kurdish majority areas had been packed with thousands of soldiers from outside these areas, and they put together a document which I think was sent to the Congress, to members of the Congress.
Yes, I have received that document, I have read it, so we put extra attention on the voters lists to see if we could find any evidence of this accusation, and it’s maybe good to explain, I visited myself the region of Diyarbakir, which I know quite well, I’ve been there three, four times before, so what we did is when we visited the polling stations, and as you probably know, most polling stations are housed in the schools, so you have situations, there’s not only one voting station in a school, but sometimes eight, nine, or ten of them, and what we did is we visited one or two polling stations thoroughly, so we stayed there for about 25, 30 minutes, and looked at the way things were going, but at the same time, we investigated all voting lists of all the other stations in that same school, so formally we have visited 10 voting stations with a bit longer of time, but we have investigated the voting lists, I think, I didn’t count it exactly, but about 25-30 stations altogether, and we have not found any evidence of this, so all the voting lists had few people on the addresses, and were not large numbers of people on the same address, which was the accusation, which doesn’t mean it’s not true, but we have not found it, and I have had no report from other councillors, who also looked at the voting lists, we have not found voting lists with this kind of problem.
Because they were quite specific on addresses, actually…
The voting lists are very clear, it’s a list of the name of the people, and where they live, and these lists are public, hanging on the walls, so you can check them, and we checked them all, and there were all small families on the addresses.
Because certainly the thing that was produced by the DEM Party did give addresses that had like hundreds or thousands of people.
They said that. We haven’t found them.
Did you have anybody at Şirnak, which is obviously somewhere that this has changed the result according to the DEM Party, and they say that there were over 6,000 people brought in, and you can see the buses bringing people in, so did you have anybody there?
Well, I have to repeat, we haven’t seen it, we haven’t found it, so it may be true, but we have not found it, and if you look to the outcome of the elections, I have not the idea that it reversed the outcome in the cities, so if you look to the outcome in terms of where the DEM Party, for instance, has won, you look to the chart of Eastern Turkey, then all these communities are voted by majorities by the DEM Party, so they were not damaged as far as I can see it at the moment, but once again, I do not have the information that this was done. Only I know the accusation, but not the proof.
Is this something that you will look at further? I mean, I mentioned Şirnak, because that is somewhere that people believe was…
Well, what we do, as I said, we do not only look to the period before the elections and the elections itself, we also look to the period after the elections, and this might concern also this matter, but then we have to find proof, but we will also look if the elected persons are in reality also installed into their positions. Those who are elected mayor should become mayor and not mayor of a prison, so we will have to see.
And that, of course, was something that happened immediately after the last elections.
We’ve seen this happening before. I visited myself mayors in prison, in Diyarbakir also, in the recent years, so we know this happened. I also talked to the trustee at that time in Diyarbakir, and we know how it functions, and this has not much to do with democracy, I believe.
Because it’s not just the trustee, is it – it’s the council as well.
Yeah.
And you said a little bit about the election, the mukhtars, and the problems with that, but there was actually in one place, a small place in Diyarbakir, that there was a murder, there was a crime, and somebody was shot.
Yes, that gave, of course, it gave some tension, what you see happening in the polling stations, but I think your listeners know quite well that the position of mukhtar is very much wished. So, you see the image of the position, the authority within this, the social authority within the community, causes tensions between the different clans, who obtains the position. And we saw that, especially in the villages around Diyarbakir, because I was not only in the city, that about half of our visits was outside in the villages. And I got strongly the impression, although I’m not sure, but I got strongly the impression, most people came for the election of the mukhtar, and not so much for the other elections. Many people spoke about it like that too, but again, the election of the mukhtars is not really regulated, so they handed out their own ballot, ballot versions of the papers that they had to put in, and this went quite chaotic. So, we saw them acting sometimes even a bit aggressive, and I was informed about the shooting in a polling station nearby. It was not our station where we were, but it was not too far away. But they informed me this, in reality, had nothing to do with the political things between political parties, but it was a fight between clans who really wanted to have that position, and they fought each other, and it ended up in this battle. It was more a social thing between the clans, than it had to do with elections itself. So, we decided also to continue our work, we didn’t stop because of that.
So its really about personal power in the region, and what can be done with it…
And those who know the Kurdish culture, of course it’s sad things like this happen, but it’s understandable.
And perhaps they deliberately put the voting on the same day to increase the turnout.
Yeah, it’s very possible. I don’t know the reasoning for that, but I think myself, but I don’t know if you can execute something like that, but it would be wise if the government would organize some rules on this kind of elections, because I had the impression people invent their own rules to their own benefit. That’s not wise to do in an election, it should be neutral.
And I was wondering, I don’t know if you personally have been on previous delegations, but I know obviously that the Congress has sent people, and I was wondering how this occasion compared with previous occasions, with 2019, and if any of the recommendations that were made following that last occasion have been acted on.
Yes, yes, as I said, I’ve been there several times before in Diyarbakir. The staff in the hotel recognized me, that was kind of interesting. At that time, I had the feeling there was much, much more pressure. You could feel that, experience that in the streets. And in my experience, this time the people were much more relaxed. During the lunch period, we walked around a little bit in the city. I was at the old mosque in the old town, but people were quite calm, in my view. Of course, there was also the influence of the Ramadan, which was sometimes clear, people couldn’t eat and drink etc. And sometimes people were very rushing with the counting, because of course they wanted to eat, I understand that. But it didn’t give me a negative feeling, while on other visits the tension was much higher.
And the recommendations that you’d made last time, have they acted on any of those?
Well, we’ll have to look a bit more into that. I have the view that they still are valid.
Can you say any of them that were particularly important?
I already mentioned one, which I find myself very important. For instance, a debate is necessary on the role of the press and the public broadcasting system. It’s really important in a democracy that the press feels free to write whatever they want to write, also if somebody gets angry about it. But the press should be neutral. Now, in the discussions that we had with the authorities, there is also freedom of press, the authorities say. So, if the press themselves choose to take sides in the debates, that’s something that’s allowed, because of the freedom of expression, of course. But in my feeling, a journalist has also a responsibility to objectively inform their readers or their viewers. And we have the impression that lots of journalists abide by what the government wants them to do. At the same time, we see journalists ending up in prison, etc., if they take a different stance. So, the liberty of journalists is limited. And in a democracy, it doesn’t really function if you limit the freedom of speech of journalists in a way – also the objectivity, at least of the public broadcast system, should be guaranteed. And here, we really have a problem. You probably know yourself. If you write articles that are not well wished by the national government, you might get into trouble. We are very much aware of that. So, had the influence on people and the pressure that you could get into prison.
Somebody said to me in Diyarbakir, we are choosing people to go to prison, because he believed that many of the candidates would end up in prison, just because they were Kurdish, and just because they didn’t like it that Kurdish people were elected as mayor or a member of a city council. We’ll see what happens. We will follow that as a congress, and we will respond to it if this happens.
Yes, I mean, it’s amazing that people are still competing to stand in those circumstances.
Yes, I’m a quite worldwide traveller. So, I see in many other countries, I’ll give you an example. In April, I will go to Guatemala, and there you see similar things that people who are so much concerned about their own culture, their own language, etc., and they are willing to stand in places that are dangerous. Dangerous in terms of being shot or dangerous in terms of going to prison. There are many people who have the courage and the responsibility to do that. That this is also the case in Turkey.
So, I wonder, is there anything else that you feel that’s important that you’ve noticed that you’d like to add?
Yes, well, in a positive way, because not all is bad that we’re talking about. I was myself happily surprised that democracy in Turkey worked in this way, that you can see a change in the balance between political parties like what happened in this outcome. If you asked me before, I had my doubts if this was possible in Turkey. And the democracy has done its job. This is how democracy should work. If people are not satisfied, then they choose the parties that they believe may be better to do things. And at the same time, the party who is responsible gets challenged by this. Erdoğan spoke about this himself. He is challenged by his own population to have a different way of ruling the country. Because the majority now, because it was a majority that did not vote for his party, gave him a signal, you better improve, otherwise we are in trouble. This is how democracy should work. If you’re not satisfied, you go to another party. And you cannot do this by small numbers, but if you do this by large numbers, then there is a debate will be going on in Turkey, how to do the next coming of the next years, what to do. Each party will evaluate thoroughly what happened here. And that’s what democracy is about. It’s not a wrong thing. It’s a good thing. That’s how it should work. So let’s see if Turkey is capable of dealing with these kinds of changes. I’m very interested in that. So we will follow this as a Congress thoroughly.
So just to return, because obviously I’m working for a Kurdish paper, and there’s been so much concern about what people see as stolen votes. And I was wondering what sort of evidence that you would need to see to take that on board, what would you ask from them?
The best evidence would have been that we found voters lists that proved that this was true, and we haven’t found them. So that’s a problem in itself. But you must be sure that we as a Congress, we do have our papers, our charters, for instance, also on human rights. So the right for the Kurdish people to have their own language, the right to have your own culture, the right to rule your own cities, if you have the majority in the city council, are very basic rights of the Kurdish people. And you will always find also the Congress behind you if it concerns these kinds of rights, democratic rights and human rights.
At the same time, we have a debate with the Turkish people, because they use the word terrorism quite easily. So we have a difference of opinion about what terrorism really is. And the word terrorism in Turkey means something else than it does in Europe. So we have a much smaller definition of terrorism.
Well, these are things that will be debated with the Turkish authorities too. It has been debated, I debated myself with the different ministers on these matters. So we’ll see how the developments will go. I hope for Turkey because I like your country. It’s a beautiful country. And the people are beautiful if you speak to them individually. So you need a better future than you have now.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Leendert. Thank you for speaking with us today.
It’s all my pleasure.
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Part II, 3 April
Thank you very much, Leen, for coming back again today, because since we spoke yesterday, quite a lot of things have happened. And we’ve learnt that the DEM Party elected mayor of Van, Abdullah Zeydan, has been removed from the post, a post that he got elected to with 55% of the vote, and been replaced by the AKP candidate, who got just 27%. So I was wondering, how was your delegation informed about this? And what are you doing about it?
Well, I received a mail myself with this information. We did not yet discuss this in the delegation, because we did not yet have a meeting about it. So in this matter, I’m not speaking on behalf of the delegation, but I’ll be speaking on my own.
But this is not unexpected, not so much the person itself, but before the elections, and also in previous elections, we’ve seen activities like these. Personally, I believe it won’t be the only one, we’ll see probably more of it. And we will spend some time also in investigating what happens with the result of the elections, because this is a matter that is related to the question whether the elections are accepted or not. Formerly, Erdoğan has spoken out in public that he accepts the outcome of the election, but these are activities that give the indication that at some regions or cities, the outcome is not accepted.
Now, I do not know the formal reasons of this decision and who made the decision exactly, that’s not clear to me. But I expect we’ll see more cases in the coming time. And this will also be dealt with, as far as I’m concerned, in our report on the election observation.
So were you officially told about it as a delegate? I mean, you…
No, no, I did not get official information. It was done through people I know in Strasbourg that informed me. And I have sent through this information to the secretariat, so they can put it in the dossier on the report.
This isn’t the only thing that’s occurred to challenge the DEM Party since the elections, though obviously it’s the biggest one. So we’ve seen in Urfa-Hilvan, that when the AKP objected, they said they’ll re-hold the election in June. And at the same time, there’s been a lot of violence against the protests. So in Hakkari, we’ve actually seen protesters facing people with live ammunition. I mean, the people they’re facing have got live ammunition, not the protesters. So how do you, as a delegation, keep a tab on everything that’s happening?
Well, as soon as we get the rumours, then we have our own networks to get information. Often this is done through ambassadors. Also the Turkish ambassador will probably be questioned about what’s going on. And we will receive different kinds of reports on this, so we can judge the matter.
Of course, we have no formal authority to intervene in matters like these. But if we have to write down the results of our observation mission, then part of the report will also be about if the outcome of the election will be executed. And this is an example where it’s not being executed. And as I said before, this is not new. We’ve seen in the past years several decisions that mayors were replaced by trustees or other forms of replacement. And this has been questioned by the Council of Europe a lot. And I imagine that this will be questioned again also in the coming meetings.
So this would be, I mean, you presumably also will receive things from different parties as well, their comments on what’s happening.
Yes. And Turkey must realise that these reports are put on the agenda in 46 member states. So 46 countries that are united in the Council of Europe will talk about this matter, will talk about these things that occur in Turkey, and will talk about how Turkey interprets democracy in their country.
And I just wanted to return actually to just to clarify something from yesterday’s discussion. So just if you could clarify a little more the way your observation works actually on the ground. So do you choose which places to go to? Or does the authorities choose which places to go to?
No, no, no, there’s no question about that. So the delegation splits up. We had a large delegation, about 20 people, elected politicians from these 46 member states. They split up in teams of two. The teams have an interpreter and a driver. And they’re completely free and nobody can stop them. They have the authority to choose to go to which station they will visit or not. So there is no question about it. Nobody makes suggestions. In my case, in Diyarbakir, nobody suggested me which stations I should visit or not. We are well aware because we’ve done this before, of course. So we know it’s the different schools. For instance, in our case, my fellow companion in our group, we decided to do half of the visits outside Diyarbakir in the villages and other half inside Diyarbakir. And we’ve visited quite a lot of stations.
So I’m just a little puzzled then why you didn’t go to any of the places that the DEM Party had highlighted as having problems with the electoral lists, because they did actually give addresses, I think, on the document that you received, no?
Yes, but that’s very delicate because we must be neutral. So we decide at random and not at suggestion. That’s not the way it may work, because then Turkey rightly can say, so you listened to the wrong people. So we have to do it at random. We did it at random. We did it at random.
Okay. And I was just wondering, you know, in the light of what’s happened since, if there’s any regret in the delegation that, I mean, yes, your report had criticisms, but the overall tone, and particularly because of the end, and the headline that it was given on the Council of Europe’s own website was really positive. And I was wondering if there’s any regrets about that.
Well, to be clear, the press conference is not the report. So the report, it has not been written yet. The press conference is only a text for a press conference, and it’s the general impression of the day.
And my own view is that as far as we see problems, like we just discussed in Turkey, are the problems before the election and the problems after the election. And the general idea, we’ve seen things going wrong, but the general idea is that the teams in the election observation offices worked right, so that we have not seen any forms of fraud or corruption in the polling stations. That’s what the press conference was about. That’s about what happened on the day itself. I’ve seen in Diyarbakir very well-trained people who did the job very well. I’ve seen the observers of the different parties being part of the polling stations, but they cooperated with each other, and we have seen no conflicts in the polling stations. And that’s what the press conference was about. And we will pay special attention to what happens after the election and also what happened before, like I was also very critical about the position of the press in Turkey. That’s an example of that.
So you’ll have to wait a while before the report is there. The report will be much broader and wider than the press conference.
But there is scope, I suppose, for the report also to include more about the day, if you were to get more information, more about the voters’ lists, for example.
Yes. In the workings, we fill in a form of each visit. So there’s a huge pile of forms. About 140 or 150 stations were visited. So the Secretariat is now analyzing these forms, and that will be the base of the report, what the findings were of the observers.
Well, we look forward to seeing what the final report is. Can you just outline first, just as a final thing, what the process is now for your delegation?
Well, we have a monitoring commission planned in June. Then the draft report will be…
Sorry, the monitoring commission, does that go to Turkey or…?
No, no. The monitoring commission is part of the Council of Europe.
Okay.
So the monitoring committee executes the election observation and also executes the monitoring activity. There will soon be an extra fact-finding mission to Turkey also, so that will be added to this process.
But in the monitoring committee of June, there will be a draft report debated. And when it passes the committee, it will be a formal decision-making in the Congress of October. And after the final decision-making in October, the report will be sent to all governments of the member states and will be dealt with in the Committee of Ministers.
Okay. Do you see, just as a final – well, unless there’s anything else that you yourself would like to add – but I was just wondering if you saw… Obviously, what’s happening in Van is very similar to what happened last year – sorry, last time. But maybe reactions are different? Do you see differences this time around?
No. Well, like I said yesterday, I see one positive point that if you look to the result of the voting, there still is a mechanism possible in Turkey where the people change their opinion and vote as they have voted. And this is a positive side of the election. We are very curious if the response of the government and the response of the regional governors maybe will change in the coming time, or will it be the same as we’ve seen the last four years. If it’s the same and they start a struggle for power, yeah, then we have our own ideas how to look at the way Turkey organizes its country.
And there will be debates also in the Parliamentary Assembly and in our Congress about how to deal with this, because Turkey has to answer since they signed the Charter of Local Democracy, and that gives obligations. So there will be tension there in the debates, and we will do anything we can to at least publicize what happens and put pressure on this dossier.
Do you think that reaction from the opposition or from outwith Turkey is different this time? Or perhaps it’s too early to say?
Yeah, it’s too early to say, although I’m curious what will happen. You might think this brings some changes. Of course, when I speak in a neutral way, all political parties will evaluate this outcome, and all political parties, including the AKP, will think about what to do with it. How do we deal with it? What did we do wrong? Why did we win votes and why did we lose votes? And this usually brings a different attitude. If the decision is that the attitude will not be changed, then yeah, there will be a reaction in the next elections, I imagine.
So thank you very much, and thank you especially for coming back today, and we’ll keep watching what’s happening. Thank you.
Thank you very much.