NationStates

Duhon wrote:

Califghanistan wrote:Erdogan is the best thing to happen to Turkey.

What hot garbage.

-Ocelot- wrote:

Califghanistan wrote:Erdogan is the best thing to happen to Turkey.

If you hate Turkey. The guy is going to turn one of the most historically powerful and respectable nations in the world into a weakened banana republic. At least Erdogan has Putin on his side, so it's totally worth it.

Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum wrote:

Califghanistan wrote:Erdogan is the best thing to happen to Turkey.

We can give you as a gift

Califghanistan wrote:

Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum wrote:
We can give you as a gift

(Image)

Ataturk was a communist asshole who fucked over the Muslim Empire that was the glory of the world, the Ottoman Empire. Since then, the ruling Communist party has been taking stabs at the other side, the Muslims. Finally, we have a leader in our country who cares about the people.

Califghanistan wrote:

Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum wrote:
We can give you as a gift

Ataturk was a communist asshole who fucked over the Muslim Empire that was the glory of the world, the Ottoman Empire. Since then, the ruling Communist party has been taking stabs at the other side, the Muslims. Finally, we have a leader in our country who cares about the people.

Califghanistan wrote:Ataturk was most definitely a communist. Kemalism is communism.

Thermodolia wrote:

Califghanistan wrote:Ataturk was most definitely a communist. Kemalism is communism.

As a guy who’s actually a far left socialist no he’s not

Califghanistan wrote:

Thermodolia wrote:As a guy who’s actually a far left socialist no he’s not

He founded the Turkish Communist party.

The Archregimancy wrote:

Califghanistan wrote:
He founded the Turkish Communist party.

This is a wild misrepresentation of the history of the Turkish Communist Party in the 1920s.

The Türkiye Komünist Partisi, or TKP, was founded by Mustafa Suphi in September 1920; Ataturk had nothing to do with it. Suphi was a strong supporter of the Bolsheviks, and was backed by Moscow when he returned to the collapsing Ottoman Empire to set up the new party. Suphi was assassinated a year later, and the TKP was subject to violent suppression by Ataturk's new Turkish Republic throughout the 1920s after the conclusion of the War of Independence in 1923.

What Ataturk did do was set up a puppet shadow communist party, the Türk Komünist Fırkası, in a deliberate attempt to undermine the Bolshevik-backed TKP. This wasn't a proper political party, but rather a ropaganda vehicle designed to counter the effectiveness of the official TKP. It lasted at most a couple of years before Ataturk decided it had outlived its usefulness, and disbanded it.

Edit:
<when a mod doesn't notice that the account he's replying to was deleted before he hit 'submit'>

Califghanistan wrote:Ataturk was most definitely a communist. Kemalism is communism.

Major-Tom wrote:

Eternal Lotharia wrote:Oh look, a dictator using the courts to his advantage to make sure he wins.

And they say trump can't do that here

Thankfully, our system of checks and balances as laid out in the Constitution and elsewhere would largely prevent the hypothetical "nightmare scenario" from ever coming to fruition, barring something truly unprecedented.

Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum wrote:Poll has been updated

Highever wrote:Are they really elections if the dictator in charge is just going to keep rerolling until he gets the result he wants?

An Alan Smithee Nation wrote:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48190351

Much criticism from the EU, and others, as Erdogan decides to re-run the mayoral vote in Istanbul that his party narrowly lost last month. To me another sign that Erdogan is taking Turkey deeper into dictatorship.

Vistulange wrote:Alright, your resident Turk and recent voter checking in. While I am Turkish, I do not reside in Istanbul, but instead am residing in Ankara, the capital city. That means I have not voted in Istanbul, but instead have voted in Ankara, and I'm proud to say that I voted for the CHP candidate Mansur Yavaş. That more importantly means I cannot vote in Istanbul, even if I move there in the next few weeks, because the registration for the elections is based on residence and registration in Istanbul on the lists of the 31st March elections.

The Election Process Itself and Voting - How We Voted in this Election

Now, let's get down to business. The Supreme Electoral Council (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu, YSK) is the legally authorised body in Turkey in regards to elections. The YSK's decisions are final and cannot be appealed in court. Below the YSK sit provincial electoral councils (il seçim kurulu), and below those, municipal electoral councils (ilçe seçim kurulu) who make decisions based on their respective jurisdictions, but their decisions can be appealed and go up one tier, that is, municipal to provincial, and provincial to the YSK itself.

The election process is simple enough. Prior to voting, the ballot box committee, composed of members of political parties. Every participating party is permitted to send their own officials there to oversee the voting process (not really, but the details are really too detailed, and would make this post even longer). They swear their oaths, and from 09:00 onwards, you can enter the designated classroom of whatever school you are designated to, the classroom which has the ballot box you have been assigned to, usually somewhere very close to your house, and you wait in queue with your ID card. You wait and you chat with other prospective voters, and finally it's your turn to vote. You walk up to the ballot box committee and take the four separate ballots (for metropolitan mayor, for municipal mayor, for municipal parliament, and for neighbourhood "chief"), as this is a local election and you are voting in a metropolitan city, and they give you a single envelope, and they give you a single seal which is imprinted "YES". You are to strike the seal on a 2cm circle below the party and candidate name, in its own column.

Striking the seal within the column of the party without any "overflow" towards the other columns will get you a valid ballot, though also a fair bit of annoyed murmuring from the ballot officials during counting. What will get your vote invalid is, obviously, multiple seals in varying places, or a seal placed between columns, regardless of how close they are to one side. Those ballots will be struck as invalid votes during counts. Anyway, you've now voted. You fold your ballots and stuff them into the single envelope, which you close. There is a single sealed ballot box in the classroom - your envelope goes in there, through a small envelope entrance. You place the seal in front of the ballot committee, and you proceed to sign across your name with a pen, indicating that you have voted, and then you take your ID from the committee, and go out, job done, and have lunch.

At 17:00, voting ends. From this point onwards, any and every citizen has the right to watch the counting process. First, the envelopes are checked for validity, i.e. having the seal of the YSK on them¹, and other regulations. Envelopes which fail to satisfy the criteria are put to one side and their numbers are written down in an official report. This report can be viewed by the public. Then, the number of envelopes is compared to the number of signatures. If there are more envelopes than signatures, an envelope is chosen without being opened, at random, and is burned. This process continues until there is one envelope per signature. The spare ballots and envelopes are wrapped, sealed, put aside, and their numbers are also written down in the official report.

The counting process then begins. It cannot be interrupted, even in the case of protests and irregularities. Once started, the ballots are counted until finished. The head of the ballot committee holds up the ballot so the voting seal is clearly visible, and reads out the vote loudly and clearly. Two members of the ballot committee are responsible for marking down vote counts for every party on their own sheets of paper. This paper will have been shown to the watchers to be blank and unmarked prior to the counting process. The entire ballot box is counted in this manner, with every read ballot being placed onto the table in a visible and discernible manner.

The official report for the results for a given ballot is signed by the entire ballot committee and is put up for public display for a week. A copy of this report, upon request by party and independent candidate representatives, is given to them following the committee's signing of it. Everything pertaining to the count is put into an "electoral bag" (basically a large sack, really, even though the YSK likes calling it an electoral bag), closed, sealed with the ballot committee's seal, and signed by the committee. The chairman of the committee along with two members of the committee, chosen by allocation, are tasked to escort the bag to the designated municipal electoral council as fast as possible, without any delays. The merging of official reports at the municipal electoral council is done before the representatives of the political parties.

The reason I've explained all of this is so you can understand the Turkish electoral process for these elections. Being a person who has been taking part in these elections, one way or another, since the 2014 local elections, I can testify that there are very little irregularities, at least in metropolitan areas. The AKP, contrary to Western myth, do not fraud their way to victory in elections. The regulations put up by the YSK - which I've described in detail up there - are actually observed and followed, and are not just on paper. Now, for the scandal surrounding the re-run of this election.

2019 Istanbul Local Elections, and Why the Annulment is a Scandal

The AKP has protested the results of these elections stating "mass fraud", but that's not the whole story. Amongst their complaints were that the ballot box committees were formed irregularly. The problem with this is that these ballot box committees are made public some time before the elections, and the Law on the Basic Principles of Elections and Electoral Rolls, linked below but unfortunately in Turkish, clearly specifies in Article 119 that complaints against these are to be made within two days of the lists going public, and that the decision of the provincial electoral council is final, that is, it cannot go to the YSK.

Remember that bit about "political party representatives" on the ballot box committees? Yeah, that's where the AKP is basing their protests on. It's the detail. In truth, it's composed like this: The five political parties that got the most votes in the previous general elections in that municipality elect one permanent and one substitute member to the committee. In addition, two public servants, or public bank employees, are chosen by allocation, with one permanent and one substitute. The AKP is stating that these two members were not, in fact, public employees.

Based on this, what did the AKP say? The AKP claimed that out of the four ballots we put into that single envelope (remember, we got four ballots!), only one, the metropolitan mayor ballot, is fraudulent. The YSK accepted this reasoning. The scandal part comes when you look back, and see that on the 20th of April, the YSK rejected by an unanimous vote a complaint by the Good Party in Bursa for the exact same reason, that the ballot box public employees were not in fact public employees. Thank you for reading this far - and I'm always open to questions and whatnot.

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¹ This was the decision partly overturned by the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) which was so controversial in a previous election. Mid-election, at around 16:30, the YSK announced that the envelopes which did not bear their official seal were permissible as valid ballots.

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External resources

Turkish Elections Law, Turkish
Turkish Elections Law, English (Be aware, this is a PDF download, and is also an unofficial translation. Good enough, though.)

Nakena wrote:

Califghanistan wrote:
Ataturk was a communist asshole who fucked over the Muslim Empire that was the glory of the world, the Ottoman Empire. Since then, the ruling Communist party has been taking stabs at the other side, the Muslims. Finally, we have a leader in our country who cares about the people.

Atatürk was a genius leader. If anything he did treat Islam too softly, instead of returning to the Tengri

Also the Ottoman Empire was already in ruins when he took over.

North German Realm wrote:

Nakena wrote:
Atatürk was a genius leader. If anything he did treat Islam too softly, instead of returning to the Tengri

Also the Ottoman Empire was already in ruins when he took over.

I'm no fan of Atatürk, to be honest (I maintain that the Allies should have forced the treaty on Turkey, especially after they fucking genocided the Greek after the war ended), but he was too soft on Islam. If he'd done his job right, Turkey at the very least would have a Muslim population in hundreds at best.

Hammer Britannia wrote:Where's the option to make Istanbul Constantinople Byzantium?