Millions of Turkish voters cast their votes nationwide on March 31 in local elections to choose mayors, city council members and other officials for the next five years.
Elections in Istanbul, where İmamoğlu was awarded the certificate of the election with only a 13,729-vote difference, were followed by lengthy discussions and objections by parties demanding a do-over election due to irregularities and unlawfulness.
After the elections, the AK Party submitted an extraordinary objection to the YSK for Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Maltepe Municipality and Büyükçekmece Municipality two weeks ago to cancel and redo the Istanbul municipal election.
The AK Party's extraordinary objection concerned four categories: Irregularities in vote count sheets, serious discrepancies between the number of registered voters and the number of voting ballots, some balloting committee chairmen and members not being government employees as required by law and ineligible voters participating in the polls. According to the AK Party, there were significant discrepancies among tabulated results with wet signatures and stamps, showing the first vote record, the final record and the total number of votes submitted to the YSK. There were also empty or unsigned voting records and irregular registrations of voters. A probe of irregularities found that dozens of members of balloting committees linked the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), the group behind the 2016 defeated coup in Turkey. Of the 43 committee members allegedly linked to FETÖ, 41 were found to be customers of Bank Asya, a FETÖ-linked bank, two were users of ByLock, the terror group's encrypted messaging app, and two were members of FETÖ-linked labor unions.
