A skirmish broke out on Tuesday between ballot box observers at a station in the Belgian capital as citizens continued voting in the second round of Türkiye’s presidential election slated for May 28.
The incident took place around 9 p.m. local time (7 p.m. GMT) at Brussels Expo, where observers from a group linked to Türkiye's Green Left Party (YSP) verbally and physically attacked their counterparts from the People's Alliance.
Two voters were injured following attacks with chairs and iron bars.
One of the injured voters, who was hit on the head with an iron bar, was taken to hospital.
Police were dispatched to the scene and the entrances to the building where the voting took place were closed.
The YSP ran with the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in May 14’s landmark elections and endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the presidential vote.
While the two parties won a combined 61 seats in the race for the 600-member Turkish Parliament, both are under fire for close ties to the PKK terror group, with HDP fighting a closure lawsuit over it.
The HDP’s alleged aiding and abetting PKK activities in Türkiye, broadly condemned, have been in stark focus in the run-up to the anticipated polls.
A similar incident took place in the Netherlands, as well, in early May when PKK sympathizers and YSP supporters attacked a polling station in Amsterdam as Turks were casting their ballots for the first round of the election.
Anti-Türkiye demonstrations and even violent attacks by the same group are quite frequent across Western Europe and as recent as on Monday when a group of PKK sympathizers vandalized a mosque in Germany.
Since May 20, over 1.7 million expats have cast their ballots at Türkiye’s foreign missions and customs gates for the second round.
On May 14, voters chose between incumbent President Erdoğan, representing the People's Alliance, Kılıçdaroğlu of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and joint candidate for the six-party opposition Nation Alliance, and Sinan Oğan of the ATA (Ancestral) Alliance.
Erdoğan finished the first round with 49.52% of the vote, with Kılıçdaroğlu trailing behind at 44.88%, and both below the 50% threshold required to determine a clear winner.
