ANKARA
Election data from Turkey’s main opposition party mirrored results from Anadolu Agency and the Supreme Election Council (YSK), despite contradictory remarks from the party’s spokesman.
On election night, Bulent Tezcan, spokesman for the Republican People's Party (CHP), claimed that data from Anadolu Agency should not be trusted.
“Don’t believe in Anadolu Agency. According to the real results, the [presidential] elections will go to a second round,” he said.
Anadolu Agency covered Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections in real time and broke news to its thousands of subscribers throughout the world in 13 languages.
“Bulent Tezcan claimed the election would go to a second round. I was not there. I thought that a healthy data transfer could be done,” CHP deputy chairman Erdal Aksunger said Tuesday, speaking to Germany’s public international broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
“Then my friends and volunteers there told me it is not like that. All of the data is coming from Anadolu Agency and the YSK.”
Answering a question on Tezcan’s claim that a second round was needed, Aksunger said: “Here, the main problem began. Ok, if we accept that as he said, he must have some data to compare.”
Party members and voters could not follow election results on adilsecim.net, the website of the Fair Election Platform, a platform of Turkish NGOs and political parties, because it was down, said Aksunger.
“While we were concentrating on that, Tezcan said ‘everybody home’.”
The website was down on election night due to technical problems, he said, attributing it to his “friends’ inexperience”.
Election platform apologizes for late coverage
The Fair Election Platform apologized to voters Wednesday for posting belated results from the landmark polls.
In a written statement, it said it had assigned around 415,000 balloting committee members and 295,000 observers before Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
The platform had declared beforehand that it would share instant election results, but “when voting ended, we experienced serious problems until 9 p.m. [1800GMT] in our system -- where we were going to broadcast election results directly from the ballot boxes -- due to integration problems” over data flow.
As a result, said the group, they were unable to share election results as planned.
The statement added there were also brief problems in uploading the election result data.
“In this context, we sincerely apologize for not accomplishing our commitment in time to announce election results and not being able to meet the expectations of voters in this manner,” it said.
The platform includes the CHP, the Good () Party the Felicity (Saadet) Party – which together form the opposition Nation Alliance -- as well as the Democratic Party (DP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).
NGOs such as the Kemalist Thought Association, Unity for Democracy, and Right and Justice Platform are also included in the platform.
Anadolu Agency ‘successfully fulfilled of informing public’
“We have successfully fulfilled our task of informing the public. We covered the celebration of democracy with its all aspects and colors during the June 24 Turkish elections,” said Senol Kazanci, Anadolu Agency’s director-general and chairman of the board.
“Instead of responding to criticism, we said we would focus on our work, and whatever the case, we were able to instantly send the [election results], ensuring an uninterrupted, fast and accurate data flow.
On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won an absolute majority in the presidential election with 52.5 percent of the vote while his closest rival, Muharrem Ince, received 30.6 percent, according to unofficial results.
In the parliamentary polls, along with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the Justice and Development (AK) Party's election ally, the People's Alliance garnered 53.6 percent of the vote, defeating the Nation Alliance, which got 33.9 percent with 100 percent of the ballot boxes opened.
