Turkey: We Don't Like The Election Results- Do Over!

[Zippyjuan]

Erdogan hates competition.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48177740

Turkey to rerun vote in Istanbul following opposition win


Turkey's electoral body has ordered that Istanbul's local elections be re-held after a shock opposition victory in March.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party questioned the slim win by the opposition CHP, claiming there were "irregularities and corruption".

CHP deputy chair Onursal Adiguzel said the rerun showed it was "illegal to win against the AK Party".

The vote will reportedly be held in the city on 23 June.

An AKP representative on the electoral board, Recep Ozel, said the rerun was because some electoral officials were not civil servants and some result papers had not been signed.

Mr Adiguzel tweeted that the decision was "plain dictatorship".

"This system that overrules the will of the people and disregards the law is neither democratic, nor legitimate," he wrote.

CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was officially confirmed Istanbul's mayor by the authorities in April.

A supporters' group for Mr Imamoglu urged restraint, saying: "Let's stand together, let's be calm... We will win, we will win again."

Municipal elections took place across Turkey on 31 March and were seen as a referendum on Mr Erdogan's leadership amid a sharp economic downturn.

Although an AKP Party-led alliance won 51% of the vote nationwide, the secularist CHP claimed victory in the capital Ankara, Izmir, and in Istanbul - where Mr Erdogan had once been mayor.

The ruling party has since challenged the results in Ankara and Istanbul, which has prompted opposition accusations that they are trying to steal the election.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48177740

Erdogan determined to retake Istanbul

President Erdogan was never going to take the loss of Istanbul lying down. "Whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey", he has often said. He is determined to win back the country's economic powerhouse.

But it's a strategy fraught with risk. The Turkish lira - which has lost more than 30% over the past year - has slumped again. An economy in recession can hardly cope with more uncertainty. After all, it was economic woes that lost Istanbul for Mr Erdogan in the first place.

What's more, Ekrem Imamoglu, who was formally appointed mayor last month, is gaining popularity, fast. He's reached out beyond his base and has settled into the role with ease. The rerun could widen his win - barring major irregularities against him, which many of his supporters fear.

And Mr Erdogan's own party is deeply split on the issue. His diehard loyalists believe victory was stolen. But other wings of the party accept they lost, and that rejecting the result is another nail in the coffin for what's left of Turkish democracy.

[Danke]

Sounds like Democrats.

[RonZeplin]

[goldenequity]

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/statu...86920300101634

https://twitter.com/SharkNewsWires/s...98399787290629


zerohedge @zerohedge

TURKEY FINDS 43 ISTANBUL ELECTION OFFICIALS LINKED TO GULEN: AA

[Swordsmyth]

The pressure from President Erdogan on Turkey's top electoral body appears to have been too much to resist. Just as we predicted:

TURKEY FINDS 43 ISTANBUL ELECTION OFFICIALS LINKED TO GULEN: AA

Here we go: Istanbul elections will be voided, TRY will crash, questions about reserves will grow and Gulen will be blamed
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 5, 2019

Turkey's state media says election officials ordered Istanbul's mayoral election redone, nullifying the opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu's win.

“Istanbul elections are being renewed," Recep Ozel, the ruling party’s representative on Turkey’s elections board, says via Twitter.

As Bloomberg reports, the High Election Board’s verdict, which is final, came after a vote on whether to nullify the vote based on the ruling party’s allegation that there were widespread irregularities in the March 31 vote, which Erdogan’s candidate lost. The decision fueled concerns about the democratic foundations of Middle East’s largest economy and the prospect of more political turmoil.
The result is dramatic and immediate - a collapse in the lira...



to seven month lows...


* * *

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-nears-rubicon

[Brian4Liberty]

Sounds like Democrats.

The entire Democrat-media-establishment complex. Can they generate the same amount of hysteria and derangement in Turkey?

[Swordsmyth]

The Turkish lira continued its collapse this morning as investors interpreted Turkey’s decision to redo Istanbul’s municipal vote as yet another manifestation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s influence over independent institutions.
As Bloomberg notes, the decision drew instant condemnation from the opposition and some European officials.

The European Union called for Turkey's election body to explain its reasons for the re-run "without delay".
"Ensuring a free, fair and transparent election process is essential to any democracy and is at the heart of the European Union's relations with Turkey," the EU's diplomatic chief, Federica Mogherini, said in a statement.
Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the decision was "not transparent, and incomprehensible to us".
The French government also said the Turkish authorities needed to show "respect for democratic principles, pluralism, fairness [and] transparency" in the new poll.

It also raised investor concern that the nation’s recession-mired economy now faces an extended period of political turmoil.

“Turkey has had fair and free elections since 1950,” Soner Cagaptay, the director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said on Twitter.
The “decision to reverse the March 31 Istanbul mayoral race, in which the governing party lost, is the book end of a historic era. Until now, it was one man, one vote, from now on it is: vote until the governing party wins.”

Protests have erupted across Istanbul over Erdogan's decision to re-run the election...

The reaction is clear, sell Lira first...



More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...e-run-decision

[Swordsmyth]

Turkey’s debt problem, coupled with the plummeting lira, is arguably the most important risk factor for the nation’s economy.
To make matters worse, far from it posing a threat just to Turkey itself, it also has the potential to inflict significant damage elsewhere too, starting with key economies in the Eurozone.
At first glance, the situation in Turkey might resemble many past similar scenarios of a heavily indebted nation with a plummeting currency that descends into a severe recession and eventually gets bailed out, like Greece.
However, there is one key difference that makes Turkey’s debt problem much more complicated and potentially dangerous. Unlike Greece, Italy or other seriously debt-laden economies, it’s not just government borrowing that’s the main risk here.


Instead, it’s the unsustainable and increasingly unfinanceable corporate debt that makes Turkey a ticking time bomb and renders an IMF-rescue option problematic.
Private debt to GDP stands at a staggering 170%, while, overall, over half of the borrowing is denominated in foreign currencies. Thus, the collapse of the lira has made it extremely challenging for businesses to pay off or even service their debt, while the default risk has surged. Around $179 billion in external debt is due to mature until July 2019, which amounts to almost a quarter of the country’s annual economic output, according to JPMorgan estimates. Most of that, $146 billion, is owed by the private sector and banks in particular.
However dire the current debt predicament might seem for Turkey’s businesses and economic outlook, it is important to also consider the implications for its debtholders, especially since European banks feature prominently among them. In fact, the level of exposure in some cases is so worrying that it justifiably raises concerns that what happens in Turkey won’t just stay in Turkey.
Spain’s banking sector is one of very few in the European bloc that was so far considered not to be problematic; especially in comparison to Italian or Greek banks.
However, the exposure of Spanish banks to Turkish debt means that the currency and debt woes of Europe’s neighbor have decisively challenged these assumptions. Spain’s second-biggest bank, BBVA, controls 49.9% of Turkish bank Garanti, which has already reported a rise in non-performing loans. Spanish banks also led the lending spree to Turkish businesses over the past years, rendering them vulnerable to the spiking default risk.
Although Spanish banks were by far the greatest lenders for Turkey, French, Italian and German banks also have significant exposure to Turkish debt. This already became problematic from the onset of the Turkish woes this past summer, when investors dumped Eurozone bank shares and prices suffered significant blows. Among the worst hit were BBVA, Unicredit, and PNB Paribas. Yet still, a blow to the stock price is nothing compared to the damage that a sustained currency crisis and rising default risk can inflict to the already vulnerable European banking sector.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...ystem-avalance

[Swordsmyth]

Turkey's Supreme Electoral Board (YSK) has cleared the way for the same balloting officials who monitored voting in Istanbul's contested mayoral election on March 31 to oversee the June 23 revote, the Hurriyet Daily News reported June 4. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has appealed the decision, which appears to contradict the AKP claims that prompted the election do-over in the first place.

More at: https://worldview.stratfor.com/situa...tanbul-do-over

[Swordsmyth]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on June 18 that the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate for mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, could be barred from taking office should he win election on June 23 if he fails to apologize to the governor of Ordu province, who has accused Imamoglu of calling him a dog, Ahval reported.

Imamoglu has been showing an edge in recent polls against the AKP candidate, and enjoyed a strong showing in a June 16 televised debate.

More at: https://worldview.stratfor.com/situa...-taking-office

[donnay]

Sounds like Democrats.

Exactly!

[Zippyjuan]

Polls in the re-vote have closed. Final results not in yet but it looks like Erdogan's party is about to lose again. Former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has reportedly conceded.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48739256

Istanbul mayoral re-run: Erdogan's ruling AKP set to lose

Turkey's ruling party is set to lose control of Istanbul after a re-run of the mayoral election, latest results show.

The candidate for the main opposition party, Ekrem Imamoglu, has a commanding lead with more than 90% of votes counted.

He won a surprise victory in March which was annulled after the ruling AK party complained of irregularities.

The vote is being seen as a key test for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr Imamoglu has won 53.6% of the vote with nearly 95% of ballots counted, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.

His opponent, former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, has conceded defeat. "I congratulate him and wish him good luck," he told supporters.

Meanwhile, Mr Imamoglu said the result marked a "new beginning" for the city.

"We are opening up a new page in Istanbul," he said. "On this new page, there will be justice, equality, love."

Who are the candidates?
Mr Imamoglu, 49, is from the secular Republican People's Party and is mayor of Istanbul's Beylikduzu district.

But his name was barely known before he ran for mayor in the March election.

Mr Yildirim was a founding member of Mr Erdogan's AKP and was prime minister from 2016 until 2018, when Turkey became a presidential democracy and the role ceased to exist.

He was elected Speaker of the new parliament in February and before that served as minister of transportation and communication.

Why was the previous result annulled?
Mr Imamoglu's narrow victory of 13,000 votes in March was not enough for Mr Yildirim to accept defeat.

The ruling party alleged that votes were stolen and many ballot box-watchers did not have official approval, leading the election board to demand a re-run of he vote.

Critics argue that pressure from President Erdogan was behind the decision.

He won by a lot more than the first vote.

Mr Imamoglu's lead of more than 775,000 votes marks a huge increase on his victory in March, when he won by a margin of just 13,000.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48739256