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TURKEY - In Brief 31 Mar 2019 by Atilla Yesilada

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It is 2:00 Monday, Istanbul time, or 2 hours after Mr. Yildirimdeclared victory in Istanbul, even though according to the unofficial tally of Anatolian Agencyroughly 110K of votes had remained to be counted, with Yildirim only ahead by 4,441. Then, CHP candidate Imamoglu and chairman Kilicdaroglu protested that their results obtained from poll observers showed Imamoglu ahead, urging the High Election Council (HEC) to make a pronouncement. That was the last we heard from the Istanbul race where both the HEC and AnatolianAgency (AA) are silent.AA just announced that “it is waiting for results to be delivered from the field”, which smacks of escapism because the vast majority of missing votes are from staunchly pro-CHP boroughs of Kadikoy and Besiktas, which also happen to be smack dab at the city center! 15 minutes ago, Mr. Erdogan made his traditional Balcony Speech where he admitted to “losing some big cities” (and did not cite Istanbul among AKP’s victories), after which he went to some pains to explain why the outcome is a victory for the AKP-MHP alliance. I don’t want to digress in the direction of Erdogan’s messages, which were full of ambiguities and deserve a fuller analysis later on Monday. My impression of the situation in Istanbul is Imamoglu winning with the count still in progress or having won, and AKP and HEC bargaining or quarreling about whether to hide the result. I don’t want to be partial here. Even if Imamoglu had won, the difference is so narrow, both candidates deserve a recount, which will take days. The worst case scenario going forward is HEC anointing Yildirim the winner without convincing proof, which would deprive this election off legitimacy...