Turkey: Green Left's demand for renewal of election in Antep rejected

Turkey: Green Left's demand for renewal of election in Antep rejected
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Thousands of Kurdish voters were prevented from voting by the scam of a small national socialist party who signed up the voters as poll attendants elsewhere, without their knowledge.

A newly elected deputy for the Green Left Party announced on Thursday that the party's application for the renewal of the election in the province of Antep has been rejected by the provincial electoral board.

Sevda Karaca, a senior official of the Labor Party and recently elected Antep deputy for the Green Left, said that thousands of voters in Antep were prevented from voting by a scam, and the electoral board "turned a blind eye to the stealing of the right to vote."

It was exposed on Sunday that The Patriotic Party, a small national socialist party whose political discourse revolves around severe hostility against the pro-Kurdish democratic opposition, signed up in an apparently malicious plot thousands of senior Kurdish voters as poll attendants in Antep, thus preventing them from voting at the polling stations in their neighborhoods.

Noting that the Green Left lodged a complaint that "the Patriotic Party signed up thousands of citizens without their knowledge and prevented them from voting," and that "the people's right to vote was obstructed through criminal means," Karaca said:

"By rejecting our demand for the renewal of the election, the provincial electoral board actually made it clear that they will turn a blind eye to the stealing or the voters' right to vote."

The Green Left received 9.1% of the vote in Antep and won a seat.

The pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) ran under the sister Green Left on 14 May to avoid the consequences of a last minute ban by Turkey's Constitutional Court.