Turkey - Ex-Ak Party employee reveals how fraud won the 'Islamist' AK Party elections

Turkey - Ex-Ak Party employee reveals how fraud won the 'Islamist' AK Party elections. (Bugun).

“The 30 March 2014 were viewed by the AK Party as life or death, and the plan was to win the election at all costs,” expresses an anonymous employee within the AK Party, outlining mass fraud in last year’s local elections local.

Speaking to the daily Taraf newspaper, the ex-employee of the Election Coordination Center of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), who still works for the party, spoke how the AK Party outlined, manipulated electoral poll results, deliberate misprints of vote counts against the AK Party’s competitors all factoring in to the victory. He adds that the he could no longer stomach the incidents that occurred.

The anonymous source’s claims verify findings in a case concerning the local election results pertaining to the Kağıthane district of İstanbul. In December the supervisor of the #1060 ballot box confessed that there were alterations in the ballots to favor the AK Party.

29 cases have been opened concerning a total of 37 inquiries concerning the March 2014 local elections concerning Kağıthane İstanbul. AK Party delegate Fazlı Kılıç had won the election with 132,562 (51.3%) of the votes in Kağıthane. The AK Party were victorious obtaining 46.5% followed by CHP at 27.8%.

The source outlines that the manipulation of election polls was the starting point for the AK Party’s tactics.

“The AK Party-friendly survey companies prepared polls which showed the AK Party votes high," notes the individual, who had been working for the AK Party since 2011, adding that the AK Party would then use these polls results to justify that the outcome of the elections were fair and expected.

Preparations were also made to orchestrate the ballot officials according to the source who further outlined that the AK Party had conducted different intelligence gathering on each ballot box, profiling the supervisor; “Individuals who were either pro-AK Party or easy to engage were appointed to Electoral Board Presidencies.”

The elections results revealed that numerous ballots were misreported, in a matter that often favored the AK Party. According to the source, “the numerous errors in the election were deliberate. ‘Mistakes’ on the ballot results reported from towns to the central administration decreased the results of any party ahead of the AK Party…For example the Republican People’s Party (CHP) 320 votes were recorded as 32. Upon discovery they would simply state it was an error.”

The ex-Electoral Coordination Center employee also confirmed the widely reported notion that the AK Party had tried to discourage rival parties representatives from remaining at the ballot box until the election was concluded.

“Rumors were circulated that the AK Party had won with a vast majority in order to discourage the ballot officials from other parties from remaining at the box. In instances where other party representatives remained in the room the AK Party officials would try to stir up fights." He adds that minutes were loaded of ballot supervisor’s phones to keep the contact on going with the coordination center.

The source also adds that the AK Party votes were also hiked up with numerous frauds concerning addresses. “Tens of individuals’ names were written in the address information of other party’s voters. There were many double votes… in municipalities buildings were created on paper, and false addresses, streets home were shown as addresses.”