Another election, another time of celebration for veteran Turkey experts who are free to endlessly repeat their uncontested and unsubstantiated views on Turkish electoral procedures, since no one is checking up on them. Orrr, at least, no one was checking until now.
Michael Koplow’s latest article on the Turkish elections is problematic.
He basically claims that there was some “unusual stuff” going on with the handling of Sunday’s election results.
“Also as of this writing, the Turkish Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) has not released any official results and the YSK website is down, and it has been ever since voting ended. I’m an Occam’s Razor kind of guy, and quite frankly, the prospect of the AKP doing so much better five months later despite things being so much worse seems like it should be statistically impossible. The central elections website is down, votes were counted hours faster than they were last time, the ban on broadcasting results was lifted before it was supposed to…”.
Contrary to these claims, the Turkish elections were completed in the usual, actually boring, manner.
The YSK always announces its preliminary official results a couple of days following the elections. For example, the YSK provided the temporary results of the June parliamentary elections two days after the voting date. Conclusive results were released after two weeks.
Moreover, in a brief official statement on Sunday night the YSK, based on the initial data, declared that four parties garnered the necessary votes to enter the parliament.
YSK website down. Why?
YSK has been closing its ballot box sharing system (SEÇSİS) to the public on election days for years, including the election in which the ruling AK Party lost its parliamentary majority. Main opposition party CHP’s YSK representative Mehmet Hadimi Yakupoğlu told Hürriyet that the closure of the website to the public was a routine procedure. “Parties still have access to this system and it won’t be open to the public until all the results are submitted,” he said.
YSK Chairman Sadi Güven also stated that the system was closed to public access as it has been in previous elections and would be opened after the screening process of the ballot results is completed.
Votes counted hours faster, ban lifted earlier?
It is true that votes were counted at least an hour faster than during the June elections. The reason is that, in this election, citizens residing in the eastern part of the country went to the polls one hour prior to the voters living in the western side. Naturally, the counting process began one hour earlier in the eastern provinces.
YSK has lifted the ban on broadcasting results at different times in previous elections, depending on the counting process. The Council chose to remove the ban by 9 PM in the June election. However, it lifted the broadcast ban in both the August 2014 presidential election and the 2011 parliamentary election by 6:30 PM