The polling stations in Turkey are closed – the first numbers are expected in the evening. The first allegations of fraud are already in the air. The country’s electoral authority has not observed any incidents so far.
The polling stations in Turkey are closed. Now the citizens are waiting for the first projections. The head of the Turkish election commission YSK announced in the afternoon that the election had so far gone without major incidents. The state news agency Anadolu quoted him as saying: “So far the elections have gone off without any problems.” And he hopes it stays that way.
Max Lucks, Green Party politician and election observer for the Council of Europe, said the situation in the Kurdish metropolis of Diyarbakir was calm. He has never experienced the city as “relaxed and peaceful” as this weekend.
Reports of semi-rigged ballot papers
However, allegations of manipulation are being raised in videos on the Internet: It shows, for example, how someone appears to stamp the election stamp on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the AKP – in Turkey ballot papers are stamped and not filled out by hand. Another video showed someone marking Erdogan’s AKP on several ballot papers.
Semi-manipulated ballot papers are also said to have been used. To confirm that it is an official ballot, they are stamped on the back – in the place where the stamp for Erdogan would go on the front of the ballot. Because the ink apparently soaks through the paper, it looks like a vote for the Turkish president. A deputy from the opposition CHP shared a video about this. It is unclear how many such cases there are and how and whether such ballot papers are counted.
Election observers from the CHP are said to have lodged an objection with the Turkish electoral authorities. It was not possible to verify when and where the recordings were made, or whether the ballot papers were real copies. It was also not possible to check whether the allegations were justified.
Voter turnout in Turkey is traditionally high, with long queues forming in front of polling stations on Sunday. More than 64 million people were entitled to vote, including 3.4 Turks living abroad.
Probably attacks on election observers
The pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP has meanwhile confirmed a media report to the dpa news agency, according to which election observers from the sister party YSP were attacked in the south-eastern Turkish city of Mardin. The dispute broke out after observers denied more than one family member access to the polling booth.
On Twitter, some users were apparently blocked yesterday at the behest of the government. Still Twitter boss Elon Musk defended the procedure: If the company had not followed the request, the government in Turkey might have blocked Twitter completely, Musk said.
Erdogan arrived in Ankara
Erdogan, meanwhile, arrived in Ankara against expectations. The president landed in the capital in the early afternoon, the state news agency Anadolu reported. At noon, Erdogan said he would follow the results of the parliamentary and presidential elections from Istanbul.
Results expected later this evening
The polling stations have been closed since 5 p.m. local time (4 p.m. German time). Results are expected later in the evening.
A total of around 64 million people in Germany and abroad were called upon to elect the president and a new parliament. According to figures from the opposition, some ballot boxes in the metropolis of Istanbul were already full by early Sunday afternoon, and queues had formed in front of many polling stations before they opened in the morning.
A head-to-head race between Erdogan and opposition leader Kemal Kilicdarolgu is emerging in the presidential election – Erdogan is not the favorite in the elections for the first time in 20 years. It is not yet clear who will get the majority in Parliament with its 600 members.
With information from Uwe Lueb, ARD Studio Istanbul