Third Post: Erdogan readying for “balcony speech", opposition disputes AA reports

TURKEY - In Brief 24 Jun 2018 by Atilla Yesilada

---

According to independent Haberturk TV, Erdogan has won in the first round, and he will “soon” make another one his famous balcony speeches. While other mainstream broadcasters are more circumspect, already Mahmoud Abbas and İlhan Aliev congratulated Erdogan for his victory. At home MHP leader Bahceli and PM Yildirim, too, extended their congratulations. According to Anatolian Agency figures Erdogan is slightly below 53% with “96% of the ballots opened”.In general elections, AKP-MHP’s lead narrowed slightly to 345, as HDP is exceeding 11%. This is the view from the government and the main-stream media. However opposition media and CHP dispute these reports. According to CHP’s tally with 40% of the vote counted, Erdogan garners only 51.7%, with Ince at 33.5%. Opposition broadcaster Halk Tv streams a steady flow of ballot supervisors sweating to deliver the sealed sacks of counted votes to district electoral boards. I have no idea where Anatolian Agency gets its data. It could well be a representative sampling of poll booth results. I tried to access the website of high Election Council, which is either hacked or is overloaded with traffic. It appears that CHP and Good Party are getting ready to challenge election results nationwide. I don’t know whether their efforts will reach the point of rejecting the results. If Erdogan makes his acceptance speech before an official announcement by High Election Council, this could get very messy, because the latter would find it very difficult to defy him if actual results turned out to be different than those of Anatolian Agency. At the end, I am not too alarmed YET, neither am I ready to change my conclusion that Erdogan and AKP-M...