Turkey’s electoral commission keeps public guessing over Istanbul result
Turkey's Supreme Electoral Commission has given into some the ruling party's demands in Istanbul, where a post-game battle is raging over the mayorship.
The cloud of uncertainty cloaking Istanbul’s future government has yet to clear as Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Commission (YSK) delivered mixed signals on demands by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for a rerun of the March 31 polls in the country’s largest city.
The body convened for a second day running to weigh the AKP petition to invalidate the ballot that gave the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate Ekrem Imamoglu a narrow victory. The opposition took heart when the YSK rejected the AKP’s claim that some 14,712 former civil servants sacked under emergency decrees in the wake of the failed 2016 coup were ineligible to vote and should not be counted.
But the YSK said it would investigate another AKP complaint to do with the status of around 41,132 voters including 21,782 mental patients, 1,229 dead people and other ghost voters who allegedly inflated the opposition’s numbers. The YSK also agreed to look into charges that almost 20,000 balloting personnel who took part in the count were ineligible to serve in the role.
CHP lawmaker Sezgin Tanrikulu told Al-Monitor that by his party’s reckoning, between 2,000 and 4,000 such “irregulars” voted, leaving Imamoglu’s 13,000-vote lead over his AKP opponent intact.
