Turkey Election 2023: 5 instances how Erdogan tailored judiciary, gagged press, rigged polls

Having helmed Turkey for two decades, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is contesting the poll of a lifetime, staking his entire career on the line. A joint Opposition and a soft-spoken challenger, though, have pushed the nation to a run-off after none of the two candidates— Erdogan is in lead—could post over 50% votes. This election is pivotal to the fruition of Erdogan’s meticulously crafted political life: if he loses, he would have failed to become the leader of the Muslim World. But, will Erdogan lose? Even if the Opposition wins, Erdogan may not lose. History is replete with instances of political rigging, tailoring of judiciary to that end, gagging Turkish press, taking out Turkish Opposition parties and challengers when the going has become tough for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). 1. In 2014, counting of votes stopped for several hours at several polling stations in the mayoral race for capital Ankara when it seemed that the vote would swing in favour of AKP’s Opposition candidate. It was literally a case of cat getting out of the bag: the official explanation for the halting of counting was that a cat had entered the electrical system and caused a short-circuit. When counting resumed the AKP candidate’s lead grew from 3000 when the counting had stopped to 20,000 in a jiffy. 2. In 2017, according to reports, amid the crucial referendum on giving President Erdogan sweeping powers as part of a fundamental rejig of the nation’s constitution, judges overseeing voting (the ASK or the election board) announced that even ballots without official seal were to be counted. This removed any check and balance over fraudulent votes. Actually, the matter was a simple one. The voters were to mark yes or no on the ballot. Each ballot was given to the voters after an official seal was marked over it, qualifying it as a valid vote. Oppisition parties had back then claimed that about 2.5 million bogus votes were counted to hand over victory to Erdogan. 3. In 2022, according to magazine Foreign Policy, the Erdogan government changed Turkey’s electoral law despite stiff resistance of the Opposition parties. As part of the changes, the judges on Turkey’s election board (YSK), which manages and sees all elections in the country, were to be selected by lottery than by seniority. 4. This year, ahead of the Presidential elections, the YSK ruled that ministers could stay in office and yet contest as candidates for parliament despite Opposition claims that this would affect the fairness of the elections since ministers could use their powers to influence the outcome. According to Duvar English, before 2017, the practice was that ministers would resign from their positions prior to the election. The Erdogan and AKP-led government abolished this regulation the same time in 2017 when referendum turned Turkey into a presidential state. The parliamentary and presidential elections were held together on May 14. 5. According to reports, Erdogan’s AKP has used courts to wipe out Opposition figures. The best-known example is that of Selahattin Demirtas, the former co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish rights political party and the second opposition party in Turkey’s parliament. He has been in jail since 2016 allegedly on trumped up charges. “The Demirtaş case is one of many in which the Turkish state is abusing the criminal law to silence political opponents and gradually dismantle democracy. By refusing to follow an explicit release order by the ECtHR, it is plainly seeking to circumvent the Convention system. The stakes could therefore hardly be higher. It is imperative that the CM takes all measures to ensure the Court’s judgment is given immediate effect,” Helen Duffy of the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project had remarked earlier. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook_,_  Twitter and  Instagram_._