Countdown Begins for Turkey’s Elections

Turkish voters will go to polls for parliamentary and presidential elections on Sunday with 56,322,632 registered voters and 180,065 ballot boxes across the country.

Voting is scheduled to start at 9.00 a.m. local time (0600GMT) and continue through 5.00 p.m. local time (1500GMT), Anadolu reported.

Voters will be able to cast their ballots after they show their ID cards or any other official identification document.

Voters will cast two separate ballot papers in the same envelope—one for the presidential and one for the parliamentary elections.

After the voting ends, ballots cast for the presidential candidates will be counted first.

For the first time, bedridden voters—more than 17,000—will be visited at their homes by election officials who will pick up their ballots.

Some 1.49 million expats voted in a 13-day period from June 7-19 at 123 Turkish missions abroad. Expat votes have been brought to Turkey by airmail and they will be counted at the same time as the votes cast in Turkey on June 24.

Balloting at customs gates also began on June 7 and will continue through the election day.

  Parties in the Running

The Supreme Court of Election (YSK) announced that eight political parties will participate in the early parliamentary elections: the Justice and Development (AK) Party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the Free Cause (Huda-Par) Party, the newly formed Good (IYI) Party, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the Felicity (Saadet) Party and the Patriotic (Vatan) Party.

For the first time in Turkish history, political parties will go to elections by forming alliances.

Turkey’s ruling AK Party and the MHP have formed an alliance (People’s Alliance) while the CHP, the IYI Party, and the Felicity Party have forged another (Nation Alliance).

A bill, submitted by the ruling AK Party and the MHP in February, stated that a political party could back another during elections.

In general elections, a political party must receive 10% of the votes nationwide for any of its candidates to win a seat in parliament. Now, only the alliance needs to pass the threshold in order for the parties to claim seats in parliament.

Ballots will bear the name of the alliance juxtaposed to that of the candidates whose parties have decided to proceed with creating an alliance.

Six candidates are running for president: Recep Tayyip Erdogan for People’s Alliance, Muharrem Ince for CHP, Selahattin Demirtas for HDP, Meral Aksener for the Good (IYI) Party, Temel Karamollaoglu for the Felicity Party, and Dogu Perincek for the Patriotic Party.