EU urges Turkey to address electoral shortcomings ahead of presidential runoff

The European Commission has asked Turkey to solve the deficiencies detected by international observers in the presidential elections last Sunday, which resulted in the passage to a second round, on May 28, of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the opposition Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, of center-left. In an unusual statement, the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, and the Commissioner for Enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi, make an "appeal" to the authorities in Ankara to take into account the conclusions of the observation missions on the elections of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Council of Europe. "The EU attaches the utmost importance to the need for transparent, inclusive and credible elections on a level playing field," they said in a joint statement. The OSCE accuses Turkey of a bias towards Erdogan in media coverage and some irregularities and democratic restrictions without reaching fraud.

Misgivings about possible excesses of the Turkish Government have also affected a Spanish delegation. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has protested through a "note verbale" to the Turkish authorities for the retention and expulsion "without justification or explanation" of 10 Spaniards, including three parliamentarians, who had come to that country to follow the presidential and legislative elections last Sunday, according to Miguel González.

"It is a call to sailors so that there are no international observers in the second round," denounced one of those affected, the deputy of Podemos Ismael Cortés, in statements to EL PAÍS. "It is also a sign of how far the regime is capable of going to coerce the exercise of fundamental rights. That is why there is concern about the second round. Because if he is able to do this with a foreign delegation of deputies and senators, who have behind him a Foreign Ministry that supports him, what will he not be able to do with the people there?"

Cortés was part of a delegation of political and union representatives, among which were also the deputy of EH Bildu Jon Iñarritu and the senator of ERC Jordi Martí, who was invited to follow the development of the elections by the Kurdish left, which in the legislative elections on Sunday attended under the acronym of the Party of the Green Left (YSP) before the threat of illegalization that hangs over its usual brand: the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). The Spanish representatives arrived on Saturday in the province of Siirt and, on Sunday, they limited themselves to "accompanying the representatives of the YSP" and staying "at the door of the schools", since they did not have an official accreditation from the electoral authorities. "It's something we've done in elections in other countries, and it's not illegal," Cortes said.

Members of the Spanish delegation had split into groups to observe the elections in several towns in the province, and throughout the day, Turkish police officers stopped some of them at different points, confiscated their passports and forced them to go to a police station. At the end of the night, the police also arrived at the hotel, where the rest of the members of the group followed the electoral count through television and took them to the police station.

They spent the night at the police station when observers refused to have their police fingerprints taken and to sign an expulsion order admitting that they had violated the electoral law. At one point in the night, Cortés explains, another group of agents from a different unit arrived at the police station and threatened to prosecute them for "attack against national unity," accusing them of having held meetings with "terrorist organizations." Finally, after long hours of "fear, anger and frustration" under police detention, with the help of lawyers and the mediation of the Spanish Embassy, it was possible to agree on his transfer to Istanbul and departure from the country the next day without opening legal proceedings.

The Spanish MP described the atmosphere in Kurdish areas on voting day as "repressive" and "intimidating" due to the high police presence: "In every polling station, even in villages of 100 or 300 people, there were always 15 or 20 heavily armed gendarmes, many in military clothing and rifles."

On Monday, the leaders of the HDP and YSP acknowledged that their results were not as expected. According to preliminary data, they won 8.8% of the vote, almost three points less than in 2018. In part it is because, in the west of the country, many voters opted for the leftist Workers' Party of Turkey (TIP), an ally of the Kurdish left, which received 1.7% of the vote. However, in the Kurdish-majority provinces, the vote for the YSP fell between 3% and almost 10% compared to the last elections, something that the Kurdish leaders attribute to the fact that they had to change their acronyms a month before the elections and to the "atmosphere of pressure", with a campaign of arrests in their environment in the weeks before the elections. "Government repression and fraud tipped the balance of the results in the elections," said Çigdem Kilçgün Uçar, the YSP spokeswoman.

Opposition complaints

As the days go by, allegations have emerged about how the Electoral Commission, by amassing polling station minutes at the provincial level or by including the data in its system, has passed YSP votes to other parties. "Behind these mistakes is there an organized action with bad intentions? At the moment we have no evidence and consider it mistakes, but we will protect our votes in [Turkey's] 193,000 ballot boxes," HDP leader Mehmet Rustu Tiryaki said. Also the main opposition formation, the center-left CHP party, has announced that it has filed complaints about numerous tables and that it has entered in its computer system all the records and is checking them with the official results of the Electoral Commission.

The OSCE and Council of Europe observer mission, to whose report the leaders of the European Commission refer, claimed to have detected some irregularities on the day of the vote, but not large-scale fraud. What the OSCE did denounce was the electoral campaign and the way in which the elections were reached, in a playing field clearly skewed in favor of the Government, which meant that "democratic standards were not met". In particular, he highlighted the "biased media coverage" – linking the opposition presidential candidate to terrorism – and restrictions on the freedoms of assembly, association and expression, particularly for the Kurdish left. The legal framework for elections, which was amended in March 2022, has also been a cause for some concern. "It has substantial shortcomings and does not provide a sound legal basis for the conduct of democratic elections," the OSCE report said.

During the election campaign and the first round of voting, the OSCE and the Council of Europe deployed 400 observers, but have not yet announced how many will travel to Turkey in the second round. On the other hand, the European Parliament has not been able to send a similar mission. A source from this institution confirmed to EL PAÍS that last year the possibility of deploying MEPs as observers began to be explored, but the Turkish response was a resounding no. A few weeks before the elections, at an interparliamentary meeting between MEPs and Turkey, the representative of the German Greens, Sergey Lagondinsky, said that Turkey is the "only candidate country [for EU membership] to which the European Parliament cannot send observers." Turkey's representative to the EU, Faruk Kaymakçi, responded that there will be no invitation to the European Parliament because "on previous occasions it has given bad examples and parliamentarians, instead of observing the elections, have gone to Turkey to campaign."

The backsliding on fundamental freedoms and the rule of law in Turkey has been a matter of concern to the EU for years. Ankara was declared a candidate country for the EU club in 1999 and negotiations were opened in 2004. However, the drift of the country under Erdogan – with breaches, for example, of rulings of the Strasbourg Court – led to the freezing of negotiations and currently few trust that the candidacy will materialize in an accession.

Brussels thus moves in a complex duality with Ankara, which has embarked on a path opposite to that of the EU, but is a necessary partner for issues of combating terrorism or irregular immigration. In these circumstances, and taking into account that Ankara usually charges against the EU when criticism surfaces, Brussels has remained silent during the Turkish campaign to prevent Erdogan from using possible controversies to his advantage, as he did in previous electoral appointments. Hence, Varhelyi and Borrell's appeal for the second round of elections is quite unusual.

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