To the dry question: "Hopes for the runoff?" Ayse (the name is fictional), Kurdish activist of the YSP, does not give half answers: "No, I don't believe it. Erdogan will invent something else and win again," he says. And while we speak in his kitchen in a large building on the outskirts of Dyiarbakir, the "capital" of Turkish Kurdistan, he shows us the messages that cross in the chats of the YSP militants (green and left) who collected the opposition vote of the Kurds converged on Kemal Kiricdaroglu who stopped at 45%, while Erdogan came close to victory in the first round with 49.5%.
In the messages of the militants there are photos of the minutes of the polling stations, photographed by scrutineers and representatives of the opposition list, which do not coincide with the official results, compared section by section. The same complaint came from the HDP, the Peoples' Democratic Party which, being at risk of being outlawed, has renounced to present candidates for Parliament. Its leader Selahttin Demirtas has been in prison since 2016, the year of the failed coup, arrested despite being an MP.
In a press conference and then on Twitter, Demirtas' men showed section by section the result that emerges from the minutes and the official one. In section 1240 of Bismil, Dyiarbakir prefecture, for example, 233 votes were written for the YSP and 3 votes for the MHP, Erdogan's coalition ally. Looking at the official results, however, it turns out that the MHP took 233 votes, while the YSP only 1. "Do you understand? - Ayse gets angry - We could not go to the government offices to bring the minutes, we had to deliver them in the sections! The MHP here in Kurdistan is voted for by very few people, only the police, the military! And instead look at the results!"
The HDP communiqué then mentions other sections: in 1249, 1 vote for the MHP on the minutes, became 147 in the official reports, while the 147 votes of the YSP became 2. Same situation, with few variations, in sections 1085 and 1066. In that 1094, in the locality of Hakkari, the 229 votes of the YSP were transferred to the AKP, Erdogan's party. Of these violations, the HDP claims to be able to show documents and that there are already 21 cases for which it claims to have evidence.
In such a situation, with justice now firmly in the hands of the government, the Kurds' discouragement is maximum. Ayse is echoed by another activist, already arrested last April 25 in a raid before the elections: "We cannot explain it: there is a frightening economic crisis, human rights are compressed, why did people vote for Erdogan? Istanbul's poorest neighborhoods voted for him!" And he adds: many of our people are so angry that we don't know if we can get them to vote in the second round!"
Out of the chorus the voice of the newly elected deputy Ceylan Akga, elected from the ranks of the YSP, despite being of the HDP. Why didn't we win with Kiricdaroglu? Because President Erdogan has all the resources of the state, he wore the president's hat when it suited him, and when he wanted he was the AKP candidate - he adds - it was not a fair electoral competition". Moreover, Erdogan has polarized the country, divided it into good and bad, demonized the opposition, and exalted the white Muslim Turks, the local version of the WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) of the United States. "A very dangerous speech in a country where there are different religions and ethnic groups", concludes the new parliamentarian.