Turkey: Officials may be involved in election manipulation

Election results were erroneously entered by officials of Turkey's top election authority, and objections concerning over 1,000 cases have been filed with the Supreme Electoral Board (YSK), a representative of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said on Tuesday, adding that the errors spotted so far do not yet suggest to a change in the number of parliamentary seats secured by political parties.

Two days after the elections in Turkey, HDP's representative at YSK Mehmet Rustu Tiryaki said that they have spotted over 1,000 cases at which election results were entered erroneously by YSK.

"We do not yet have evidence indicating that there is an organized wrongdoing behind this," Tiryaki said. "For the being we assess that this is the result of erroneous entries. We will check the results from all 193,00 ballot boxes."

Most of the cases involve errors in the entry of votes received by Green Left Party, under which HDP ran on 14 May to avoid the consequences of a possible last minute ban by Turkey's Constitutional Court.

A media advisor for HDP told Gercek News that the errors were apparently made at YSK's District Electoral Boards, after the signed reports of election results were conveyed by local electoral boards in polling stations.

Objections may be filed in the course of three days after the elections, but this may be extended by a decision of YSK, the advisor added.