Turkish president and People's Alliance's presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a speech during an election rally campaign in Istanbul, Turkey. AP File
Turkish president and People's Alliance's presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan gives a speech during an election rally campaign in Istanbul, Turkey. AP File
On Wednesday, Turkey’s biggest opposition party said it has submitted complaints about alleged anomalies at thousands of vote boxes in Sunday’s historic election, in which President Tayyip Erdogan did better than predicted.
According to Muharrem Erkek, deputy head of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), abnormalities at each voting box ranged from one single incorrectly tallied vote to hundreds of such votes.
He stated that the CHP has formally objected to 2,269 ballot boxes countrywide for the presidential election and 4,825 for the legislative vote, both of which were held on Sunday.
Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party and its nationalist allies stunned pollsters by obtaining a commanding majority in parliament.
In the presidential vote, Erdogan is headed for a runoff on 28 May against challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu after falling just shy of the 50 per cent threshold needed to win outright in the first round.
Kilicdaroglu, the CHP chair, received 44.9 per cent in what was seen as the biggest electoral challenge to Erdogan’s 20-year rule. A third candidate, Sinan Ogan obtained 5.17 per cent.
“We are following every single vote, even if it does not change the overall results,” Erkek told reporters in Ankara.
There were a total of 201,807 ballot boxes set up for the election, in Turkey and abroad, Erkek said.
The deadline for challenging the results of the presidential election expired on Monday, while that for the parliamentary vote expired on Tuesday, Erkek said, adding that the CHP had filed all its appeals within these timeframes.
The opposition alliance that includes the CHP has appealed to young voters, in particular, to turn out to support Kilicdaroglu in the runoff, saying the first round showed that Erdogan had lost the vote of confidence he had sought.
Erdogan, now in pole position, says only he can ensure stability in Turkey, a NATO member state, as it grapples with a cost-of-living crisis, soaring inflation and the impact of devastating earthquakes in February.
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