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Showing posts with label Muharrem Ince. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muharrem Ince. Show all posts

June 24, 2018

Turkey elections live: Voting booths close, Erdogan leads - but 2nd round is now more likely

Voting polls have closed in Turkey, the results of which will determine if incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secures another five years in office.

The main challenger to Erdogan, centre-left candidate Muharrem Ince, has warned that an Erodogan win will lead to authoritarian rule
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This year's elections are unprecedented, as the winner of the presidency will wield executive powers — and the prime minister post booted — under a new set of reforms backed by Erdogan and later adopted after his 'yes' campaign won a referendum
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Turkish voters have two ballots, one for the presidency, and another for parliament.

  • Voting has closed in the Turkish election and so far Erdogan is in the lead with around 54%, while Muharrem Ince trails behind on about 30%.
  • In the parliamentary vote, AKP has garnered around 44% of the vote, while CHP are on about 22%.
  • The pro-Kurdish HDP party has surpassed the 10% threshold required for their politicians to be eligible to enter parliament.
  • Voter turnout has also been recorded at a whopping 87% for both the presidential and parliamentary elections.
  • Reports of violence, deaths have emerge during the election. In the city of Erzurum, in eastern Turkey, Good Party representative Mehmet Sıddık Durmaz and two other party workers were shot and killed.
  • Track our interactive chart as the results come in for the presidential and parliamentary elections.
  • Turkey's election system explained in 90 seconds.

For the complete report click here/

Turkey -Turkish Presidential Elections: Mega Rally in Istanbul of opposition's democratic and charismatic Muharrem Ince attracts 5 million supporters - EU-Digest Editorial



Muharrem Ince fresh approach attracting manyTurkish voters
Mr Muharrem Ince drew a massive crowd to an Istanbul rally on Saturday June 23, one day before the election.

Even Istanbul Police estimated that over 5 million attended this rally, despite undemocratic obstructional measures  taken by the Erdogan Governmenmt, including, halting ferry boats, which were bringing Ince supporters to the rally, censoring publications which wanted to report the event. 

People who clicked on web pages which reported on Ince speeches and events found  the following appearing on their screen. . 

THE PAGE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR
COULD NOT BE FOUND
The page you are looking for has been moved or does not exist. 

Turkish voters are calling for end to corrupt Erdogan regime
Mr Ince, a former teacher and the presidential candidate of the main opposition party, the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP), has proved highly effective on the campaign trail, drawing huge crowds, especially in the big cities.

Mr Muharrem Ince repeated an accusation made by other opposition politicians of political bias by Turkey's state media, which has given Mr Erdogan and the AK Party heavy coverage, while often completely neglecting to broadcast opposition rallies.
Massive turnout for Ince in Istanbul on Saturday June 23

"There are 5 million people in Maltepe right no,. but none of the TV channels can show it," Ince said in Istanbul this Saturday, June 23.

It is also remarkable and strange, that very few US and EU media outlets have provided hardly any coverage to the rallies of Muharrem Ince. 

Instead the international Press provides a lot of coverage to "President" Erdogan, who has locked up more journalists than the Peoples Republic of China.

Extra security forces and more than half a million ballot monitors and volunteers will be deployed across Turkey during Sundays election. 

Unfortunately large numbers of these security forces, monitors and volunteers, have been placed there by the Erdogan government, which, just like during the last referendum vote, makes fraud a major threat again during this Presidential election..

The winner of Sunday's June 24 presidential contest will acquire sweeping new executive powers under a constitutional overhaul backed by Mr Erdogan and endorsed last year by a narrow majority of Turks in a referendum.

EU-Digest-

No permission is required to re-publish the above report 
as long as EU-Digest is mentioned as the source.

June 23, 2018

Turkey - Presidential elections: Turkey’s opposition with its new shining democratic star Muharrem Ince might actually have a chance – by Zia Weise

Muharrem Ince wants to bring democracy back to Turkey
Politico reports that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s challengers are gaining momentum ahead of a snap election Sunday — their confidence buoyed by the energetic campaign of Muharrem Ince, a firebrand politician and former physics teacher who has become "dictator" Erdoğan’s foremost rival in the race for Turkey’s presidencyo reports that Turkey’s opposition, long written off as toothless, has rediscovered its bite.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s challengers are gaining momentum ahead of a snap election Sunday — their confidence buoyed by the energetic campaign of Muharrem Ince, a firebrand politician and former physics teacher who has become "dictator" Erdoğan’s foremost rival in the race for Turkey’s presidency

Ince — the nominee of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) — has won popularity with boisterous political rhetoric not unlike Erdoğan’s own.

On Saturday, while campaigning on Istanbul’s Asian side, he took the president to task over issues ranging from economic mismanagement to democratic erosion, taunting Erdoğan for rejecting a televised debate.

“We’ll only talk about the economy,” he shouted as he paced back and forth on top of a campaign bus in Üsküdar, a largely conservative neighborhood where Erdoğan owns a house. “Come on television. Aren’t you a world leader? Why won’t you come?

The crowd packing the shorefront square in the scalding June heat cheered, but Ince was not finished: “Look, the people of Üsküdar want you to, Erdoğan. Don’t be afraid, I won’t eat you. Come!” he roared.

Even though the odds, mainly reported by the Erdogan cam,  still seem firmly in Erdoğan’s favor on June 24, it will be the first time Turkey holds simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections. 

Given there is no ballot box fraud, like there was in the last Turkish referendum, a new democratic star might be born in Turkey, who can bring the country back on a normal footing, re; human rights, including freedom of the press, and economic health, also with a more than fair chance for Turkey to finally join the European Union.

Opposition candidates hope to force Erdogan into a runoff on July 8 — and most polls show Erdoğan falling narrowly short of 50 percent in the first round, suggesting they might stand a chance.
Sunday will also mark the day that Turkey’s constitutional reforms come into force, endowing the president with vast executive powers as approved in a controversial 2017 referendum. The opposition candidates have vowed to roll back the changes and return to parliamentary rule.

If there is a second round, Ince will likely be the one to face off against Erdoğan — an unexpected turn of events, as the president and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had counted on CHP to nominate its mild-mannered leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

Kılıçdaroğlu, however, surprised many by choosing Ince, an outspoken MP known for criticizing his own party. It was a shrewd choice for CHP: Unlike most secular politicians, Ince has proven capable of reaching out to voters beyond the party’s base.

Unlike most secular politicians, Ince has proven capable of reaching out to voters beyond the party’s base.

Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations said of him: “But Ince — he’s not elite, he’s a village kid, he knows how to ride a tractor. His mother wears a headscarf. So, he cannot be labelled as an elite hard-line secularist. That makes it difficult for Erdoğan to attack him,”

Erdoğan is still a force to be reckoned with. But in stark contrast to previous elections, the president has run a lackluster campaign plagued by gaffes — from a malfunctioning teleprompter to gifting the opposition its slogan of tamam (“enough”) when he pledged to step down should voters tell him “enough.”

Ince and his fellow opposition candidate Meral Akşener, the nominee of the center-right Iyi Party, are increasingly setting the tone of the campaign. When both Ince and Akşener decided not to appear on TRT state television, Erdoğan followed suit.

When Ince declared he would lift the two-year-old state of emergency if elected, Erdoğan — who had previously insisted that the emergency law was necessary for Turkey’s security — pledged to do so, too.

And while Erdoğan hopes to win over voters with a nationalist agenda, blaming Turkey’s economic problems on Western meddling and emphasizing the threat of terrorism, the opposition has run a campaign marked by a sense of hope.

Ince, who has accused Erdoğan of creating a “society of fear,” has crisscrossed the country promising democracy and rule of law, a stable economy and greater freedoms. At his rallies, he has charmed voters by dancing and cycling on stage.

Recent polls suggest Ince may score between 20 percent and 30 percent of votes in the first round, with Erdoğan between 45 percent and 48 percent (though a few surveys put him at above 50 percent). Akşener’s vote share is projected between 9 percent and 15 percent. 


Though only a few analysts predict a narrow victory for Erdoğan, a second round would see a closely fought race.

Dilara, a 19-year-old first-time voter who attended Ince’s event in Üsküdar, said she sees the CHP candidate as “fresh blood” for the opposition.

“I’ve never seen Üsküdar like this,” she said. “Things are changing. There’s a chance — a small chance — he can win in the second round.”

Like many voters, Dilara counted Turkey’s economic troubles among her chief concerns. Double-digit inflation, rising unemployment and the plummeting lira pose major threats to Erdoğan’s plans for reelection, given his promise of continued growth.


Where the opposition stands a real chance is in the parliamentary election, where they are threatening the AKP’s majority, thanks to an unlikely alliance between secularists, Islamists and nationalists.

The Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has been left out of the alliance, but Ince has gained popularity among Kurdish voters with his inclusive approach.

Ince has visited HDP’s imprisoned candidate, Selahattin Demirtaş, in jail — a risky undertaking that exposed him to accusations of sympathizing with terrorists — and pledged to support Kurdish-language education.

His overtures are paying off: Last week, a large crowd welcomed him in the Kurdish city Diyarbakır — a rare feat for a lawmaker from CHP, the party responsible for Turkey’s historical repression of Kurds

The Kurdish vote may prove crucial. The AKP will only lose its majority if HDP surpasses the 10 percent threshold to enter parliament. Opposition parties are also vying for the vote of conservative Kurds, who have favored AKP and Erdoğan in the past.

“Kurdish voters are key,” said Baris Yarkadas, a CHP MP for Istanbul. “Whoever the Kurds vote for in the second round will become president.”

With just days remaining before the elections, opposition parties and their supporters are growing bolder. Saturday’s Üsküdar rally resembled a festival, with families picnicking on the grass and vendors hawking cotton candy.

Optimism abounded, as well as a sense of unity. Aside from staunch CHP supporters, many first-time voters and even supporters of other parties were in attendance. Some waved HDP and Iyi Party flags.

“It’s a different atmosphere this time,” said Deniz Uludağ, 39, who was at the rally with her siblings. “I think the government, they’re a little bit afraid.”

EU-Digest

June 21, 2018

Turkey: The Man: Muharrem Ince - Who Could Topple Erdogan - by Safak Pavey

Turkish Presidential Candidate 
Muharrem Ince, rattling Erdogan's base
The New York Times Reports that something is changing in Turkey.

After 16 years of electoral dominance by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the secularist opposition Republican People’s Party, known as the C.H.P., has found a leader and presidential candidate who is rattling Mr. Erdogan, invigorating opposition voters and reaching out to Turks beyond the traditional base of his party.

The murmurs are increasingly audible that Mr. Erdogan may not be invincible when Turkey votes on June 24. The politician who achieved this transformation in the national mood is Muharrem Ince, a 54-year-old legislator from the C.H.P., who was chosen as the presidential candidate by his party in May. Mr. Ince has represented Yalova, a province about 50 miles from Istanbul, in the Turkish parliament since 2002. His father was a small farmer. Mr. Ince taught physics at a school before entering politics.

I got to know Mr. Ince while serving as a member of parliament for the C.H.P. from Istanbul. His speeches in the parliament went viral on Turkish social media; his humor inspired caricatures and memes, skewering the opponents. In the past month of campaigning, Mr. Ince’s witty and pugnacious speeches challenging Mr. Erdogan at public meetings have inspired the Turks.

I recently attended a public meeting Mr. Ince was having in Duzce, a city on the Black Sea coast, which has elected Justice and Development Party candidates in every parliamentary election since Mr. Erdogan founded the party in 2002. Politicians from the secularist C.H.P. would face active hostility — even assault, once — when visiting Duzce. I was surprised to see about 5,000 people waiting to hear Mr. Ince. It was a signifier that he was not preaching to the converted.

A young man I met described himself as a supporter of Mr. Erdogan’s party, but he was curious about Mr. Ince. He spoke about how the people of his city were losing their once-ardent faith in Mr. Erdogan’s party. “Nobody believes them any longer,” he said. “Even at the meetings where they distribute alms, they seal off their seating area to separate themselves from the poor.”

Yet not voting for Mr. Erdogan and his party wasn’t a choice. “Last month, the imam of our village asked all of us to put our hands on the Quran and take an oath to vote for our party,” the young man said. He wouldn’t break his oath but came to agree with the opposition leader’s message.

Mr. Ince is asking the people of Turkey to choose between freedom and fear, between national prestige and national solitude, between imposition of religious practice and freedom to choose, between openness and xenophobia.

Mr. Ince has been challenging President Erdogan for a public debate. “Let us debate on any television network you choose,” he says. The loquacious Mr. Erdogan, who is omnipresent on Turkish television, stayed quiet until Saturday, when he responded with characteristic haughtiness. “He has no shame, inviting me on television,” Mr. Erdogan said, adding that Mr. Ince would try to “ get ratings thanks to us.” Mr. Ince retorted, “He says I want to get ratings, but even the weather forecasts are watched more than his interviews.”

In May, in a speech in the parliament, Mr. Erdogan tried to dismiss Mr. Ince as “a poor person.” The opposition leader responded by asking an important question: “We got the same salary at the same time. How come you became so rich and I am poor?” (Mr. Erdogan’s salary as prime minister between 2003 and 2014 wasn’t a lot more than what members of parliament received. As president he gets paid three times more, but Mr. Ince was referring to the corruption charges against his inner circle.)

Under Mr. Erdogan, polarization between social and ethnic groups has increased in the past several years. His challenger is offering the vision of reconciliation and an end to discriminatory hiring practices by the Turkish state. “The state will have no business if a candidate is Alevi or Sunni, Turkish or Kurdish,” Mr. Ince said at a public meeting last week. “There will be no discrimination whether one is wearing head scarf or not, whether one is a woman or a man.”

Mr. Ince is also changing the misconception that his secularist party’s base is anti-religious by appearing at public rallies with his sister who wears a head scarf. He stood up against the relentless propaganda by the A.K.P. against the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, and visited its leader and presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtas in prison.

The recent fall in the value of the lira exacerbated economic anxieties in the country. Mr. Ince has offered the vision of strengthening a production-based economy, developing agriculture and offering better conditions for local and foreign investors, apart from educating Turkish youth in both their mother tongue and global languages to compete with the world.

Mr. Ince provided examples of moral leadership long before he was in the fray. In the summer of 2016, the Turkish parliament approved a constitutional amendment stripping its members of immunity from prosecution. The bill was pushed by the governing A.K.P. and its ultranationalist allies to target the members from the Peoples’ Democratic Party.

Mr. Ince argued vociferously against the bill and voted against it despite our party being divided on the subject. Earlier, he stood up against the framing and arrest of Turkish military officers by using false evidence and the hollowing out of the judiciary. He spoke out against the indiscriminate purges after the failed coup of July 2016.

During the parliamentary debates on the regressive changes in education pushed by the A.K.P., Mr. Ince called out the party’s hypocrisy by disclosing that A.K.P. elites were not sending their children to the Imam Hatip (religious) public schools, which they deem appropriate for the rest of society. He also pointed out that although the A.K.P. embroiled the country in wars and whipped up hysteric nationalism, its leaders were not enlisting their sons in military service.

Turks seem to be embracing his slogan of “Making Peace, Growing and Sharing Together.” In late April, the C.H.P. vote share, according to independent polls, was about 20 percent. Within a few weeks of Mr. Ince’s presidential campaign, the C.H.P. vote share has increased to 30 percent.

And with the opposition parties coming together, Mr. Erdogan’s time might finally be running out. But nobody knows which rabbit Mr. Erdogan and his team will pull out of their hats before the polling day.

But the shift in the national mood is evident on the streets, on the usually obsequious television networks, in the tea shops across the country. For the first time in almost two decades, Mr. Erdogan no longer seems invincible. A Turkey where every citizen may live without fear finally seems possible.

Note EU-Digest: A Turkish American citizen who was asked what he thought about the possibility of Muharrem Ince  toppling Erdogan answered: "well better the devil you know than the devil you don't.know". 

If everyone had that similar opinion about dictators in power, many would never have been toppled.

Hopefully this fresh wind, which is presently blowing through Turkey in the form of Muharrem Ince candicacy in the Turkish Presidential elections will give the Turks the courage to vote in large numbers for the next President of Turkey: Muharrem Ince