Post by Admin on Apr 1, 2014 8:46:34 GMT 2
I recently read Simon Tisdall's piece entitled "Turkey's election may ironically have dealt a blow to democracy". As a Turkish citizen, I believe this article, and many others that have a similar sentiment, vastly underestimates the severity of the situation we're in right now. First of all, Tisdall makes it seem like all the ballots have been counted, recorded and the results finalized. Unfortunately, it's been two days since most citizens voted, and there are still unopened ballot boxes in Ankara. Anadolu Ajansi, the national news agency of Turkey, has announced what they call "unofficial results" for the local elections, whereas other sources claim only 97.97% of the ballot boxes have been opened. Tension is high in Ankara, not because people are upset with the election results, but because there are no definitive results yet. Volunteers have been keeping watch of the ballots day and night, after reports of bags being stolen and burnt. We've been archiving the physical records of ballot counts, because thousands of them do not match the official results reported. And what's even more interesting is that it is not possible to reach the Supreme Election Council's website to get any data from outside Turkey.
The hostility to Erdogan does have the elements Tisdall listed in the article, yes, but that is not the cause of immediate concern. Our worries about the future is part of it, but we are also worried about what's going to happen today. There is a much more imminent problem we are facing right now and it deserves more attention from foreign media, because it sure will not get attention from domestic outlets.
Right now the bans on Twitter/Youtube, Erdogan's warmongering speeches, leaked tapes, abuse of Islam are but motivators. What's more pressing is getting the results of the local elections of two days ago fairly and quickly. Yesterday, as the CHP candidate Mansur Yavas' votes approached AKP candidate Gokcek's, we noticed a pause in results being reported for a couple of hours. Then Gokcek had ten thousand votes appear in his name whereas Yavas' votes did note increase by one. Not one thousand, one. So last night alone volunteers showed that tens of thousands of votes in Ankara had been recorded incorrectly. Now CHP is appealing for a recount.
We are struggling to keep our votes, our right to vote, our right to democracy and our right to free speech. We saw and appreciated the very strong international reaction against the Twitter ban a few days ago. And we believe that what's going on today is a much more drastic impediment to our freedoms. We can access Twitter using VPNs, proxies, changing DNS settings, but once a definitive victory is declared before election results have been finalized, and once that victory is taken as fact, we are completely shut off.
The hostility to Erdogan does have the elements Tisdall listed in the article, yes, but that is not the cause of immediate concern. Our worries about the future is part of it, but we are also worried about what's going to happen today. There is a much more imminent problem we are facing right now and it deserves more attention from foreign media, because it sure will not get attention from domestic outlets.
Right now the bans on Twitter/Youtube, Erdogan's warmongering speeches, leaked tapes, abuse of Islam are but motivators. What's more pressing is getting the results of the local elections of two days ago fairly and quickly. Yesterday, as the CHP candidate Mansur Yavas' votes approached AKP candidate Gokcek's, we noticed a pause in results being reported for a couple of hours. Then Gokcek had ten thousand votes appear in his name whereas Yavas' votes did note increase by one. Not one thousand, one. So last night alone volunteers showed that tens of thousands of votes in Ankara had been recorded incorrectly. Now CHP is appealing for a recount.
We are struggling to keep our votes, our right to vote, our right to democracy and our right to free speech. We saw and appreciated the very strong international reaction against the Twitter ban a few days ago. And we believe that what's going on today is a much more drastic impediment to our freedoms. We can access Twitter using VPNs, proxies, changing DNS settings, but once a definitive victory is declared before election results have been finalized, and once that victory is taken as fact, we are completely shut off.