As Turkey Votes, Challengers Say Irregularities Mar Polling

Only hours into Sunday’s presidential election, Turkey’s main opposition parties complained that voting has been marred by irregularities to favor incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Sadi Guven, head of the country’s election board, said investigations have begun over allegations of irregularities during voting in the town of Suruc near the southern border with Syria, according to Hurriyet newspaper.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu listens as Muharrem Ince addresses a party meeting.
Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images

“There are complaints coming from the east and the southeast,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, said after voting in the capital Ankara. Irregularities reported by the media range from alleged mass casting of ballots on behalf of others to blocking access for officials of the CHP and pro-Kurdish HDP party to polling stations.

The vote will determine who wins the newly powerful post of executive president and select a new parliament. The leading challenger to Erdogan, who has ruled since 2003, is CHP candidate Muharrem Ince, a 54-year-old former physics teacher. Erdogan will have to clear 50 percent to avoid a runoff in two weeks.

"So far, there has been no serious problem" during voting, Erdogan said after casting his
ballot in Istanbul. His nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli said he was not aware of complaints but said the interior ministry has taken every kind of precaution for a “healthy election.”

Fatih Dulgeroglu, a local governor in the heavily east, said scuffles broke out as some members of the Kurdish HDP party said they were being prevented from voting. He did say security officials were deployed in two villages to ensure that HDP officials could safely reach the polling stations. In Sanliurfa province, near Syria, video circulating on social media of a man trying to cast a stack of ballots in his hand has fueled tensions that reportedly triggered fist fights.

The HDP needs at least 10 percent of the vote to win seats in parliament, a bloc that could threaten the ruling AK Party’s majority. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag warned voters Saturday against voting for HDP to avoid backing “the party of the PKK,” a separatist Kurdish group, branded as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU for its decades-old war for autonomy in the country’s southeast.

“Isn’t the party called HDP the party of the PKK? Isn’t it the continuation of the PKK?,” Bozdag said. “If HDP has deputies in parliament that means the PKK will have representation in the parliament.”

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