A ballot card at the Turkish consulate in Sydney, Australia came out of its envelope with a vote for the AKP already stamped upon it. Members of the CHP Organization in Foreign Countries (CHP Yurt Disi Orgutlenme) reported the incident to the Election Council for Foreign Provinces (Yurt Disi Ilce Secim Kurulu). The council voted to forward the report to the main prosecutor's office in Ankara as a criminal case.
Voting at Turkish consulates for citizens in foreign countries has been ongoing since April 29. However, thousands have already been turned away from ballot boxes due to new and unannounced stipulations regarding voter eligibility.
It has been revealed that Turkish residents of European countries who used their Turkish identity card to conduct official business in Türkiye anytime between 2018 and April 2023 were silently registered in the government database under domestic addresses.
This transition of residency is a novel policy of which the public was not notified. Since residents of Türkiye can only vote at the ballot box nearest their registered address, these citizens are now forced to return to Türkiye on May 14 if they wish to participate in the election.
A municipal bus rolled into a ditch in the Akcaabat region of Trabzon province, leaving 39 injured and 4 dead. Residents of the region filed 600 petitions to the AKP-controlled municipality, asking to be served in the future by newer, safer vehicles. The municipality responded: "Your request has been evaluated and found suboptimal. Transportation services will be provided according to the currently planned system."
This response has met with intense anger from townspeople, who blame the accident on previous municipal refusals to appoint new vehicles to the bus line. At a funeral held today for the four dead, one of the victims' relatives pledged not to let the bus driver go to prison.
"He told everyone the bus was not working," she said. "He said it would hardly run, but it is his job to drive it. This work puts bread on his table. Why should he be at fault, and not those who sit at desks and wear ties? Let our driver heal; we hold responsible those who would take him into custody. No one will touch a hair on that boy's head."
Members of the local AKP branch were called to leave the ceremony, and the municipal mayor was forced to say the prayer of mourning from the back of the crowd, rather than his usual position of prestige at the very front. In the 2019 local elections, the same mayor had been chosen with 65% of the vote.
At about 5 PM, Abdulkadir Y. threw a stone and a phone at the AKP party building in central Ankara province. One glass window sustained a few cracks.
Abdulkadir was handcuffed on the ground by police and driven away.
In a televised interview, presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu warned that "foreign agents have the ability to create [deepfakes] of anyone… The [government] has made deals with these agents over the dark web and paid them using Bitcoin. They want to use my speech or my image to defame me."
He further cautioned: "When we claim victory on election night, do not go outside. Do not celebrate publicly. Everyone must stay at home... If you exit your house in joy, there may be aggression [against you]. People may be provoked. They may meet you on the street with guns in their hands. We must not allow this."
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