The 24 June election. |
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26-Jun-2018 13:45 MHP’s 11.1 percent election support stuns observersAs Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Public Alliance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) increased their support in Sunday’s elections over that in a referendum held last year, the MHP’s 11.1 percent share of the vote has stunned observers. After the İYİ (Good) Party’s Meral Akşener and some of her allies left the MHP, many expected the MHP to garner around 5 percent of the vote; however, the Turkish nationalists’ front unexpectedly increased its support in predominantly Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey. “So for the real surprise in the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). At 11% it has performed much better than expected. It will have a formidable bargaining power in the coalition with AKP,” Henri Barkey, a senior fellow for the Middle East at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted. The MHP had 16.3 percent support in the June 7, 2015 elections and 11.9 percent in Nov. 1, 2015 snap elections. “Even though a drift occurred from the MHP’s grass roots to the İYİ Party, the former seems to cover that from the votes coming from [Justice and Development Party],” an analysis on BBC Turkish service said. Read the full article
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Lights go out for Erdoğan challenger in IstanbulTurks attending a rally for Meral Akşener, who is seeking to unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in elections on Sunday, had to listen to her in darkness after a local municipality turned out the lights. The lights in the square in Istanbul’s Uskudar district, controlled by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), were blacked out on Thursday evening shortly after Akşener, who is the leader of the rival Good Party (IP), began to speak, local media including Yenicag newspaper reported. The nighbourhood surrounding the square continued to be illuminated, it said. |
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The incident is the latest in a series of attempts by the government to stifle political campaigns against Erdoğan, who is seeking to introduce one-man rule and abolish Turkey’s parliamentary system of government at the presidential and parliamentary elections. Akşener, like Erdoğan a right-wing politician, has received scant coverage from a media now overwhelmingly controlled by business allies close to the president. Even the taxpayer-funded Anadolu agency, the main news agency in Turkey, has hardly given her a mention. In her speech in Uskudar, Akşener said the blackout was just the latest attempt by Erdoğan’s party to silence her campaign as she toured the country. Campaign stalls had been attacked and local officials had refused access to meeting halls and carparks, she told the crowd, who had switched on their mobile phone displays to help light up the area. On Thursday, opposition politicians and activists accused the government of trying to fix the election after data and graphics produced by Anadolu and aired accidentally on a pro-government television channel showed Erdoğan winning 52 percent of the vote. Anadolu later said the broadcast was a test. In a statement on Twitter, Akşener then called on Erdoğan to confirm or deny whether his son-in-law and Energy Minister Berat Albayrak had given an order to Anadolu to announce a win for Erdoğan at 21:30 on Sunday, when a ban on publishing the results of the vote is lifted. A campaign speech by another opposition candidate – Muharrem Ince – at a rally in the western city of Izmir on Thursday, was also given scant coverage by most Turkish media, which quickly switched to footage of Erdoğan landing at a new mega-airport in Istanbul in his presidential jet. Ince's rally was attended by more than two million people, according to some estimates. Erdoğan is leading in most opinion polls ahead of the vote, but could be forced into a second round against Ince. 22 Source |
HDP rally attracts impressive crowd
A Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) rally in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakır on Wednesday attracted a large audience despite the party’s presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş being in prison.
Attendees turned on the torch functions on their mobile phones at one point in order to show how many of them there were in advance of Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
Among the speakers at the rally was investigative journalist Ahmet Şık, who is standing as a parliamentary candidate for the party in Istanbul.
“We will again foil this war plot that was set up 3 years ago,” he said, in reference to a renewal of conflict in Turkey’s southeast after the majority-Kurdish HDP successfully entered parliament.
“We will come out of this tunnel of lies. We will not only win the election, we will win the truth. On June 24 when we have all together foiled this trick of polarisation, our songs of peace which spread from Gezi Park will ring out even stronger all over Turkey,” Şık added, in reference to the anti-government Gezi Park protests of 2013. 22 Source