Turkish protesters cry foul after Erdogan triumph in local elections

Allegations of fraud were circulated on social media, including a photo which purportedly shows ballots in a rubbish heap.

Turkish riot police use water cannon to disperse protesters complaining about alleged vote-rigging in weekend local polls, outside the Supreme Electoral Council in Ankara on April 1, 2014. Adem Altan / AFPShow less

ANKARA // Police yesterday used water cannons to break up a protest by hundreds of people who had gathered outside Turkey’s Supreme Election Council building in support of the main opposition party, which is challenging local election results in the capital Ankara.

The candidate of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) appears to have narrowly lost to the ruling AKP party of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It claims discrepancies between votes registered with the election board and the party’s own ballot counts.

Hundreds of people shouted anti-government slogans and denounced alleged fraud before riot police moved in. Supporters of other political parties had joined the protest in a show of solidarity.

Mr Erdogan’s party swept Sunday’s elections, winning about 45 per cent of the votes, according to unofficial results. The AKP candidate for Ankara – the incumbent mayor – received 44.7 per cent while the opposition secured 43.8 per cent.

The opposition candidate for Istanbul, also alleging irregularities, has called for a recount there too, although the AKP won by a large margin.

“We will appeal today at the Supreme Electoral Board over hundreds of ballot boxes in Ankara,” said Aykan Erdemir, a lawmaker from the Republican People’s Party. “More than 1,000 volunteers have been working for over 48 hours to check data at the party headquarters. We have evidence of irregularities.”

Ankara was purpose-built in Turkey’s Anatolian interior as the national capital by the secular founding father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

According to provisional official results, the AKP mayor, Melik Gokcek, who has held the post for two decades, won the city by a wafer-thin margin of 44.79 per cent against 43.77 per cent for Mansur Yavas, a CHP candidate.

Allegations of election fraud have circulated on social media, including a photo which purportedly shows ballots in a rubbish heap, and there have been complaints over electricity blackouts in some areas during the evening vote-count.

Mr Yavas wrote on his Twitter account on Monday that a recount “will reveal the truth”.

Sadi Guven, the president of the Supreme Electoral Board, said: “This is a legal process. We will wait and see. Citizens and political parties should remain calm.”

Taner Yildiz, the energy minister, has blamed other power outages in part of Turkey on Sunday on weather conditions and said “those who lost the elections should not use power cuts as an excuse for their defeat”.

In the case of Ankara, where in some areas ballots were counted by candlelight, the minister also blamed a cat that had slipped into a power distribution unit and presumably was electrocuted when it caused a short circuit.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse