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TURKEY-VOTE-APPEAL
Turkey election council orders Istanbul recount after ruling party appeal
ISTANBUL, April 3, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Turkish electoral authorities on
Wednesday began a vote recount of Istanbul districts after President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP challenged tallies showing an opposition
candidate won a weekend local election.
The AKP won most votes nationwide in Sunday’s ballot but results also
showed the party lost the capital Ankara and the country’s economic hub
Istanbul.
AKP officials on Tuesday filed a challenge with electoral authorities
saying they had found irregularities and falsifications in ballots in Ankara
and Istanbul.
“The district branches of the electoral board in Istanbul decided to
recount the ballots in eight districts after the appeals yesterday,” Supreme
Election Board chief Sadi Guven told reporters.
He said some of the district branches had already started rechecking
ballots, most of which were votes that had been rejected as invalid.
AKP officials had said there was a huge discrepancy between ballots cast
at polling stations and data sent to election authorities.
Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, was a key prize for Erdogan and he had
former premier and loyalist Binali Yildirim run as the party candidate for
mayor.
Erdogan, himself a former Istanbul mayor, had campaigned hard in the city.
But the ruling party was stung by the economy with Turkey in recession for
the first time in a decade and inflation in double digits.
Istanbul was a tight race and both Yildirim and the opposition CHP
candidate Ekrem Imamoglu declared victory when tallies showed them in a dead
heat.
Electoral authorities on Monday said Imamoglu was ahead by 28,000 votes
with nearly all ballot boxes tallied, prompting AKP officials to challenge to
the result.
AKP deputy chairman Ali Ihsan Yavuz on Tuesday claimed the difference had
dipped to 20,509 between Imamoglu and Yildirim.
Imamoglu had 48.79 percent of the votes while Yildirim had 48.52 percent,
Anadolu reported on Tuesday, citing preliminary results.
The agency reported close to 300,000 votes had been annulled in Istanbul
voting.
A loss in Istanbul would be especially sensitive for Erdogan, who grew up
in city’s working-class Kasimpasa neighbourhood, and liked to tell AKP rank-
and-file that victory in the city was like winning Turkey.
BSS/AFP/RY/1612 hrs