During the 31 March local elections in Turkey, some voters in Turkey turned their ballots into platforms for protest, highlighting issues from femicide to animal rights and foreign policy criticisms.
In Kurdish-majority southeastern Diyarbakir (Amed) province, a voter placed a note inside the ballot envelope expressing outrage over violence against women and the failure to prosecute the perpetrators, making the ballot box a venue for social outcry. The note, uncovered by polling officials, sharply criticised the system for “our murders” and the lack of justice for victims, highlighting the tragic case of 11-year-old Esra Yücel from Hakkari (Colemerg).
Assaulted and subsequently driven to suicide, the young girl’s assailants were controversially freed after eight months, reportedly with the assistance of the provincial chair for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), who acted as the defence lawyer for the three cousins accused of the crime.
Furthermore, another voter, with the handle ‘kuzeyn_live’ on TikTok, cast his vote alongside ‘Hatice’, his cat, to highlight the importance of animal rights, specifically referencing ‘Eros’. Eros, a pet cat, was kicked to death by İbrahim Keloğlan in Istanbul’s Başakşehir. This incident, which was caught on security cameras, led to a legal case against Keloğlan. Initially given a lenient sentence, public pressure and protests across Turkey prompted a reevaluation, resulting in a revised sentence of two years and six months imprisonment for Keloğlan. By marking his ballot “justice for Eros”, the voter aimed to draw attention to the need for stronger animal protection laws and penalties for animal cruelty.
Simultaneously, some alleged AKP voters voiced their dissent over Turkey’s ongoing trade relations with Israel, despite the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Some of them marked their ballots with explicit messages of protest, such as “You betrayed Gaza, now we betray you” and “Ships full of betrayal / Trade with Israel”. Others shared photographs of their ballots, each bearing poignant statements or the simple yet powerful word “Gaza”, alongside images from the besieged region, to underscore their demand for significant and concrete actions towards the situation in Gaza.
