With this final edition, this series of letters will pause until the next election cycle. Although this newsletter is many months late, I hope it will be useful.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan won the 2023 presidential elections with 52% of the vote. He will serve as president for the next five years.
Erdogan has already been in power for 21 years. He was elected prime minister in 2002 and became president in 2018 after the 2017 referendum, which abolished the post of prime minister and consolidated executive power in the hands of the presidency.
Erdogan’s supporters celebrated on the streets at home and abroad. Convoys of cars drove honking in the streets, blasting AKP campaign songs and patriotic anthems. Bullets and fireworks were shot into the air.
In the Gulyali region of Ordu province, IYI Party-affiliated ballot box official Erhan Kurt was stabbed to death after he entered an argument with celebrating AKP supporters as they crawled past him in a car.
A delegation of AKP supporters beat Green Left Party-affiliated observers at a ballot box in the Battalgazi region of Malatya province. Police officers stationed at the school could not muster enough force to intervene, and had to call for many units of backup.
A man entered his voting booth in the Findikli region of Rize province with a gun and a grenade. He posted a picture of the gun pointed at Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s face on the ballot, captioned “He who eats the bread of the country he betrayed will eat bullets from the sons of that country.”
The man was later taken into custody.
In the Meram region of Konya province, a person deemed unfit to vote due to mental illness attempted to cast a ballot. When CHP- and Saadet Party-affiliated ballot box officials protested, AKP-affiliated officials attacked them. One lawyer from the CHP was injured.
Ballots assigned to voters who live abroad but remain registered to the Cavuslar village of Bingol province were cast for the AKP by those gathered at the local ballot boxes. A CHP official explained:
“When we heard of this [corrupt act], we sent a lawyer of ours to investigate. However, the gendarmerie escorted him out of the village, saying he was not safe there.
Then I and a CHP youth organizer went in his stead. There were 10-15 villagers gathered around the ballot box officials. We asked to see the signatures of those who had voted. One of the officials yelled, ‘There is no corruption here! You are falsely accusing us!’ The rest of the villagers also began yelling. The gendarmerie couldn’t stop them. They bundled us out, saying they couldn’t ensure our safety. We didn’t even have time to write a formal complaint. We therefore ask the Supreme Election Council to count ballot boxes 1280-1281-1282-1281 invalid.“
In Afyonkarahisar province, a man called H.O. attempted to vote in the name of two others before casting his own ballot. He was caught by IYI Parti officials.
In the Cinarcik region of Yalova province, a man called M.D. cast two envelopes into the ballot box when he had only been given one to use.
CHP member Ronayi Paydas was attacked at a voting station in the Akcakale region of Sanliurfa province for attempting to verify claims that locals were casting for the AKP unused ballots belonging to seasonal workers. Paydas stated:
“The AKP ballot box officials assaulted us and the officials that we [CHP] had assigned to the ballot boxes.
When I said I was a lawyer, they shouted at me: ‘It wouldn’t matter if you were Allah.‘“
Former CHP MP Ali Seker was attacked by 40 people in the Eyyubiye region of Sanliurfa for attempting to prevent men for casting ballots assigned to women.
Seker stated: “There are 1,093 people in this village, and 1,074 of them are supposed to be Erdogan voters… They called us terrorists, they almost lynched us. We would have been lynched if no one intervened.“
In the first speech of his new term, Erdogan announced: “We will remain together until the grave.“