AK Party delivers supplementary appeal for re-run demand in Istanbul

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has submitted a supplementary appeal to Turkey’s election authority as part of its demand to annul and redo the local elections in Istanbul, according to a news report by the state-run Anadolu Agency.

The appeal, delivered to the Supreme Election Council (YSK), included a list of voters in Istanbul who were previously dismissed from their public sector jobs by state-of emergency decrees issued by the AKP government.

According to a recent statement by the AKP Deputy Chairman Ali Ihsan Yavuz, the ruling AKP argues that 14,712 voters in Istanbul, who were sacked from their jobs through government decrees, should not have been allowed to vote.

In reaction to Yavuz’s remarks, Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, an MP from the pro- Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said on Twitter: “It’s not long before they argue revoking citizenship [of those who were dismissed from their public sector jobs by decrees]. They will do anything if you stay silent in the face of oppression.”

“This is a very desperate situation [for AKP]. There’s no such thing as people who have been dismissed from their jobs through decrees may not vote. It [AKP’s argument] is not lawful and they know that,” Canan Kaftancıoğlu, CHP’s Istanbul provincial chairwoman, said during a TV program.

On April 10, the YSK ruled that mayor-elects of the March 31 local elections, who were dismissed from their public sector jobs by decrees, will not be allowed to serve as mayors, and their mandates will be given to the runner-up candidates instead.

After the controversial ruling, YSK was harshly criticized by legal experts and opposition members who accused the election authority of being a tool of the ruling power.

The AKP issued the state-of-emergency decrees as part of a wide-spread purge following a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016.

Last week, the governing AKP submitted a 44-page extraordinary objection to the YSK in order to cancel and repeat elections in Istanbul, after the vote count difference between the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) Ekrem Imamoglu, and his rival Binali Yildirim of AKP declined.

The initial 28,000 vote margin between the candidates dropped to 13,900 following AKP’s appeals for a recount of votes in all 39 districts of Istanbul, some of which were accepted by the YSK.

CHP’s Imamoglu received his official mandate to be Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Mayor on Wednesday after recounts of around ten percent of the votes in Istanbul were finalized.

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from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/04/22/ak-party-delivers-supplementary-appeal-for-re-run-demand-in-istanbul/