Observers: Media Crackdowns, Obscure Vote Counting Benefited Erdogan in Turkish Election

Observers sent by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the Turkish presidential election said on Monday that Turkey’s High Election Board (YSK) was not transparent in its handling of ballots.

The OSCE also criticized Turkish state media for slanting coverage heavily in favor of incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan seemed to be in real trouble ahead of the May 14 election, battered by a poor economy, complaints about his handling of the February earthquake disaster, and general fatigue with his authoritarian Islamist rule. Polls showed his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a mild-mannered advocate of secular government backed by a potent multi-party coalition, slightly ahead on Election Day.

Instead, Erdogan came out five points ahead with 49.5 percent of the vote. This was not enough to get over the 50-percent threshold required for immediate victory, so Erdogan will face Kilicdaroglu in a runoff election on May 28 – a contest Erdogan now seems heavily favored to win.

The OSCE, which Erdogan’s government invited to send observers to the election and began setting up its operation in early April, said at a press conference on Monday that the incumbent had unfair advantages over his challengers.

“I regret to note that the election administration’s work was lacking in transparency, as well as the overwhelming bias of the public media and the limitations to freedom of speech,” said Ambassador Jan Petersen, head of the team from OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

“The process for handling complaints at all levels of the election administration lacked transparency and the Supreme Electoral Council decisions that were published generally were not sufficiently reasoned,” the report issued by Petersen’s team stated.

Another member of the observation mission, Frank Schawabe of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said the advantages wielded by the incumbent — including the aggressive censorship of opposition media — cast doubt on whether the election was truly free and fair.

“Turkish democracy is proving to be amazingly resilient. This election had a high turnout and offered a real choice. However, Türkiye does not fulfill the basic principles for holding a democratic election,” Schawabe said.

The OSCE mission singled out a number of candidates and parties who faced unacceptable levels of intimidation during the election, including the pro-Kurdish Green Left Party (YSP). However, the mission came up short of accusing Erdogan or specific officials of tampering with the election, and it did not formally challenge the validity of the results.

OSCE also criticized the Turkish government for refusing to accredit two of its observers, Soren Sondergaard and Kadir Kasriga, who are members of the Danish and Swedish parliaments respectively.

Turkey barred these two members of the 100-member mission in early May. Sondergaard said he was blocked because he has met with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia organization in Syria. Turkey considers the SDF, and nearly every other armed Kurdish group in Syria or Iraq, to be allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a violent separatist organization in Turkey.

Kasriga said he was banned from observing the election because he has been strongly critical of Erdogan and his government for their “increasingly authoritarian rule” and “actions against the Kurds.”

OSCE said it was “disappointed with this step taken by the Turkish authorities” when Sondergaard and Kasriga were denied accreditation, and warned it could “impact negatively on the work of the international observer mission.”

“The country that has invited the OSCE PA to observe should not – directly or indirectly – influence the composition of the mission. We are particularly disappointed that this denial is based on statements made in the framework of their general political mandate as independent members of parliament,” the organization said when the two observers were turned away.

OSCE said members of its observer mission remain in Turkey and will monitor the May 28 runoff.