Opposition bloc's election watchdog says election fully secure


The opposition bloc's election watchdog, the Fair Election Platform, said on Thursday that the ballots are almost fully secured as part of the measures taken by the state.

The Fair Election Platform, formed by the Nation Alliance as well as the pro-PKK Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and several nongovernmental organizations, announced that their security preparations for the elections on Sunday are complete.

The platform members gave the message that voters can go to the ballots in peace, saying 99.9 percent of votes are safe. For the 1869 ballot boxes in total - 415,000 polling board members, 195,000 observers and volunteers will provide election safety, the Fair Election Platform stated.

The parties in the Nation Alliance which are the Republican People's Party (CHP), the Good Party (İP), the Felicity Party (SP) gathered together to provide the safety of the ballots and formed various platforms such as the Fair Election Platform. "On June 24, we can say that there is no justification for not going to the polls, citing the election security issues. ...We carried out the ‘Fair Election Application' where all electors can pass visual information to us at the beginning of the election and can receive live information all day long, and it will be offered for the use of all voters from online platforms," Nesteren Davutoğlu, who made a statement on behalf of the Fair Election Platform, said.Davutoğlu said that Fair Election Platform members will send all parties' wet signature electoral reports to the election centers of the political parties as soon as the voting is over. The opposition bloc, Nation Alliance, has accelerated efforts to provide election safety for the last two months with cross meetings between four parties, the CHP, İP, SP and the Democrat Party (DP). Previously, the same procedures were done for the general elections in 2015.

For the Nov. 1, 2015 general elections the civil society organization, Oy ve Ötesi (Vote and Beyond) monitored the elections with 60,000 volunteer observers across Turkey. They had condemned allegations of election manipulation and said the election results announced by the Supreme Election Board (YSK) were in line with their assessment.

During the election day, international observers such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will monitor voting procedures such as counting, casting and recording votes without interrupting polling boards.

The observers will prepare a report by monitoring the campaigning process, on election participation and on whether international election standards were upheld.