ANKARA: Turkiye’s main opposition party said on Wednesday it had filed complaints over suspected irregularities at thousands of ballot boxes in Sunday’s landmark elections, in which President Tayyip Erdogan performed better than expected.
However, opposition party officials said the objections were unlikely to alter the result of the presidential vote, which is headed to a runoff on May 28 between Erdogan and challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Muharrem Erkek, a deputy chairman of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), said irregularities at each ballot box ranged from one single wrongly counted vote to hundreds of such votes.
He said the CHP had formally raised objections over 2,269 ballot boxes nationwide for the presidential election and 4,825 for the parliamentary vote that also took place on Sunday, though they represent a tiny proportion of the total number.
“We are following every single vote, even if it does not change the overall results,” Erkek told reporters in Ankara.
Erdogan’s ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party and its nationalist allies won a strong parliamentary majority, while in the presidential vote, Erdogan fell just shy of the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright.
Kilicdaroglu, the CHP chair, received 44.9 percent in what was seen as the biggest electoral challenge to Erdogan’s 20-year rule. A third candidate, Sinan Ogan obtained 5.17 percent.
Erdogan, now in pole position, says only he can ensure stability in Turkiye, a NATO member state, as it grapples with a cost-of-living crisis, soaring inflation and the impact of devastating earthquakes in February.
The opposition alliance that includes the CHP has urged young voters to turn out to support Kilicdaroglu in the runoff.
Mehmet Emin Ekmen, a deputy chairman of DEVA, one of six parties in the opposition alliance, told Reuters: “We do not have strong evidence to say irregularities can change the presidential race results or get another opposition candidate elected to the parliament.”
“Since Erdogan officially started his election campaign yesterday, I believe the opposition alliance should also channel its energy into the runoff,” he said. (Additional reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen in Ankara; Editing by Jonathan Spicer and Gareth Jones)
Turkiye opposition contests thousands of ballots after election
https://arab.news/nmpgn
Turkiye opposition contests thousands of ballots after election
- Opposition says irregularities not sufficient to alter overall results
- Ally says opposition should focus on campaigning for runoff
Syria says detained senior Daesh jihadist in Damascus
- The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers
DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities have arrested a senior Daesh group official in the Damascus region in a joint operation with a US-led international coalition, a security official said on Wednesday.
Taha Al-Zoubi, also known as Abu Omar Tabiya, an Daesh leader in Damascus, was detained with several of his men, General Ahmad Al-Dalati was reported as saying by state news agency SANA.
The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers and a US civilian that Washington said was carried out by a lone Daesh gunman in central Syria’s Palmyra.
“Our specialized units, in cooperation with the General Intelligence Directorate and and International Coalition forces, carried out a precise security operation targeting” an Daesh hideout, Dalati said.
On December 20, a Syria monitor said that five Daesh members were killed in US strikes in retaliation for the December 13 attack.
It was the first such incident since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and Syrian authorities said the perpetrator was a security forces member who was due to be fired for his “extremist Islamist ideas.”
