Thread by @hiyenigun

I wonder how some people came up with the idea, “Turkey’s elections are not fair but nonetheless they are free.

Turkey’s elections are neither free nor fair by any standard. Just to refresh our memories:

nytimes.com/2023/05/12/wor…

Erdogan jailed his rival Demirtaş through bogus charges and pressuring the heavily subdued, in no way autonomous judiciary in 2018. Demirtaş had to run for president from a jail cell. #democracy #FreeElections

Turkey’s third largest party HDP is under the threat of an obviously politically motivated closure case, again by a subdued Supreme Court under Erdogan’s pressure. Turkey’s 3rd largest party couldn’t run under its own banner and had to campaign under Greens and the Left Party.

Erdogan’s internal ministry regularly deposes elected mayors and replaces them with appointed trustees by his orders. At one point, 25% of Turkey’s population were living under unelected trustees that replaced their elected mayors. The electoral outcomes are not respected.

In the most notorious example from last municipal elections, Erdogan didn’t recognize his party’s loss of Istanbul and the supposedly autonomous Higher Elections Council cancelled the elections by purely his whims.

Further, they cancelled only the mayoral elections, i.e. in effect half of the same ballot, citing “fraud,” while keeping the results of Municipal Assemblies where Erdogan’s party came first. Only after a bigger defeat in Istanbul, he had to accept the defeat the second time.

Erdogan government did away with parliamentary immunity of the members of parliament and has been using the parliamentary majority and the judiciary to convict them and depose them from their seats in the parliament. +

+ Thus, people’s will in so many electoral districts has been violated so far and many constituencies have been deprived of representation, with their representatives jailed on bogus charges.

During elections, HDP election officials and observers are regularly detained by the police raids around election day, to interfere with their supervision of the polls. #FreeElections #Democracy

Erdogan suspended Turkey’s free and fair elections (which was already flawed but still kept the minimum treshold) by not recognizing his party’s loss of parliamentary majority in 2015 June general elections. + #FreeElections #Democracy

+And after foiling all the coalition formation attempts, as Turkey’s democratic institutions and culture traditionally required and successfully achieved before, he repeated the elections under extremely violent conditions.

Turkey has neither free nor fair elections (I haven’t even started listing the reasons why it’s not fair). Turkey is not a democracy; it’s listed as either “competitive authoritarian” regime or an “electoral autocracy.”

None of the major global democracy monitors in the world lists Turkey as a democracy (Freedom House, VDem, World Justice Project, the Economist Democracy Index, etc.)

If Turkey’s opposition wins, it’ll win not because Turkey is a democracy, but in spite of Erdogan’s autocracy.
If the opposition wins, its victory won’t be thanks to free and fair elections, but despite unfree and unfair elections.That’s why it is going to be an even bigger feat.