Numerous frauds reported on election day

Duvar English

Millions of voters in Turkey on May 14 went to the polls to elect a president and members of parliament. During election day, there were reports of attacks, frauds, and attempts to prevent voting at polling stations from all over the country. Daily Evrensel reporters complied the incidents.

People’s Democratic Party (HDP) Press Office announced that around two thousand people in southeastern Gaziantep province, who are mostly Green and Left Party (YSP) voters, were unable to vote because they had been registered as polling officials from the Patriotic Party without being informed.

Also in Diyarbakır, around 200 voters who were assigned as polling officials without their knowledge were not allowed to vote. 

Ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) election observers beat a Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) member when he tried to block them from entering the voting booth with voters.

HDP’s Supreme Election Council member Mehmet Rüştü Tiryaki stated that they found out that the AKP’s Adıyaman provincial chair’s brothers accompanied by the gendarmerie forced villagers to cast their votes in an open ballot. 

Lawyers objected to the AKP officials wearing name badges with the party logo in a polling station in Antep’s Şahinbey district. Even though election law strictly forbids that no material including party logos can be worn in the polling stations, the district election board stated that the AKP members can walk around the polling stations as long as they are not near the voting booth. 

At a school in the Meram district of Konya province, far-right Nationalist Movement Party’s (MHP) parliamentary candidate Mustafa Kalaycı came to the polling station with people wearing MHP and nationalist group Gray Wolves’ badges. They threatened Turkey Communist Party’s (TKP) election observers and the police did not intervene.

TİP election observers prevented a police officer who tried to vote for the second time with his duty card in Hatay province. 

AKP members’ attempt to distribute food packages with party emblems at a school in Adana province was prevented after other party officials objected.

In Mardin province, relatives of AKP’s parliamentary candidate Faruk Kılıç battered YSP’s election observers who objected when they attempted to vote together openly. The YSP observers were hospitalized after the incident. 

In Denizli province, AKP, MHP, New Welfare Party (YRP), and Republican People’a Party (CHP) violated the propaganda ban by not removing their banners.

In a village in Şanlıurfa’s Harran district, a voting fraud was committed to cast numerous votes for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after the CHP observers were beaten.

In the Gülnar district of Mersin, MHP’s district chair Celal Kadim was caught casting a duplicate vote.

Fettullah Işıkakdoğan, a polling station official who objected to the block voting of 40-50 people, was poured boiling water over him and then beaten in Urfa’s Akçakale district. 

Several other groups also tried to vote together in different villages of Adıyaman province

Soldiers and police officers prevented the Swiss delegation that came to Şırnak to monitor the elections from entering the schools. Tobia Schnebli, a member of the delegation, stated that the presence of soldiers and police officers in schools is against the democratic rule of law.

The police detained two members of a 10-member delegation from Spain in Siirt province.

Supreme Election Board Chair Ahmet Yener stated that there was no negative situation reflected to the board after the voting process ended. He added that one election observer and two citizens died of heart attacks during the voting process across the country.