A dark election introduces darker times in Turkey

First of all, I have to strongly declare that as long as elections go through a transparent process and vote counting occurs without a major irregularity, I am ready to accept and  congratulate whatever results AKP gets. If the citizens of Turkey predominantly prefer to continue with AKP leadership, I respect this decision. I had stated in many pre-election interviews, like many, I expected that AKP would be the party with the highest vote but a few major city losses could be a good sign for opposition. I believe without any irregularities AKP vote would not be less than 40%. However, I had a sound feeling that AKP would lose Istanbul or Ankara or both. So far, it got them all. Let’s have a look at the election day. In the evening of 30 March 2014, when the voting stopped and ballot boxes opened, as can be seen in the map below, in 41 cities electricity was cut down. Citizens had to count votes without electricity.

Electricity gone at all black labelled cities were in this Turkey map. Most are criticial places, CHP lost nearly all of them…

This election is probably the most watched election by citizens in Turkey’s history. Around 1400 irregularities reported. Most caused by AKP representatives and security forces. I would say most of these irregularities always occur in elections but this time there was a vigilant citizen watch around. I wanted to believe there was that there was no systematic rigging… but as of this moment I am not sure any more…

One of the most critical places is the capital city Ankara. At around 4 am, Minister of Internal Affairs, Efkan Ala, showed in the Higher Election Office, after that CHP candidate lost. Look at the screen shot above. One more ballow box opens, and CHP candidate’s, Mansur Yavaş’s, votes decrease by 2 thousand!

Not only in Ankara but nearly in all other cities, CHP dominated districts’ votes were not entered to the system until the last minute. In fact, there is still lack of data in some places. Another systematic irregularity.

I am quite sure, Ankara could be a win. If nothing changes, I honestly believe it is all over. The system is rigged and one party rule actually begins and continues with phony elections like Baath style…

Speaking of young people, my dear readers, there were more than 20 thousand volunteers in Istanbul organized by an independent civic platform called Oy ve Ötesi that monitored elections and volunteered in vote counts. Same thing happened in other cities in smaller scale. This is a direct consequence of civic awareness that started during Occupy Gezi. I believe they are the real heroes of this election. I hail all these beautiful people.

Speaking of heroes. These citizens who were official in charge of elections and whose duties to carry on all these bags of votes to Higher Election Committee headquarters had to wait until early mornings, they did their best…

Finally here but definitely not the last one point to mention is that citizens could not get a reliable update on election results. For the last couple of years CİHAN news agency (CHA), which is pro-Gülen, made an excellent job of giving the best updates as it has the largest network of correspondents. However, this time official Anatolian Agency rivalled with CHA and citizens could 2 totally different election results in each district. Not much surprisingly, AA worked like an AKP bulletin and from the outset stated AKP as massively leading even in critical cities with no apparent winners. BUT what is worse is that CHA servers were exposed to a very strong cyber attack and CHA could not work properly. Not only CHA but many pro-Gülen media sites were also under attack they could not operate properly. From the outset, a war on perceptions occurred…

Unfortunately, all State apparatus works for AKP. This might be normal to some extent, but obvious interventions to a democratic process is more than upsetting…