Mayoral elections were held in the

Turkish province Turkey is divided into 81 provinces (). Each province is divided into a number of districts (). Each provincial government is seated in the central district (). For non-metropolitan municipality designated provinces, the central district bears the ...

Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...

as part of nationwide local elections on 30 March 2014. A total of 26 mayors, one for each of the 25

districts A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions ...

of Ankara and one for the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, were elected. The election of Ankara's Metropolitan Mayor was highly controversial, with several allegations of electoral fraud overshadowing the counting process and causing numerous requests for recounts by the opposition

Republican People's Party The Republican People's Party (RPP; , CHP ) is a Kemalism, Kemalist and Social democracy, social democratic political party in Turkey. It is the oldest List of political parties in Turkey, political party in Turkey, founded by Mustafa Kemal ...

, whose candidate

Mansur Yavaş Mansur Yavaş (; born 23 May 1955) is a Turkish lawyer and politician who is currently the Mayor of Ankara, holding the office since April 2019. He was elected in the 2019 Ankara mayoral election as the candidate of the Nation Alliance (Turkey), ...

was initially on course to win the election. Finishing just one percentage point behind his rival

Melih Gökçek İbrahim Melih Gökçek (; born 20 October 1948) is a Turkish politician who served as the mayor of Ankara from 1994 to 2017. From 1991 to 1994, he was an MP. Gökçek has won municipal elections in 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, and was controversial ...

and with evidence of ballot box miscalculations, Yavaş has since taken numerous allegations of misconduct to the

European Court of Human Rights The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court of the Council of Europe which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court hears applications alleging that a co ...

. Despite Gökçek's election being upheld by the

Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey The Supreme Election Council (; YSK) is the highest electoral authority in Turkey. It was established by the Deputies Election Law no. 5545 on 16 February 1950. After the 1960 coup, the Supreme Election Council gained constitutional authority by ...

, most commentators and journalists believe that Yavaş was the actual winner of the election.

Background

The election for the Ankara Metropolitan Mayor was one of the most fiercely contested in the election, with pre-election polls showing the incumbent

from the

AK Party The Justice and Development Party ( , AK PARTİ), abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources ...

neck and neck with the

(CHP) candidate

. First elected in 1994,

was seeking his fourth term as Mayor of Ankara, while Yavaş was also expected to win strong support from the MHP .

Electoral fraud

The strategic importance of

as Turkey's capital city caused concerns over whether the vote would proceed fairly, with both Gökçek and Yavaş criticising each other for planning irregularities before the vote.

Counting process

The counting process in Ankara was widely seen as the most fraudulent in the country, with accusations of vote theft and burning, the intentional miscalculation of results from ballot boxes and even an armed intervention by unidentified gunmen in a vote counting centre within the pro-CHP district of Çankaya causing large-scale pro-democracy protests the day following the election. Opposition politicians also questioned the sudden stop in the release of results at a point where Yavaş was leading the race, only to resume hours later showing a sudden lead for Gökçek. The counting process, which took significantly longer than usual, ended with Gökçek apparently claiming a narrow lead of 31,732 votes (1%) over Yavaş, a result that was rejected by the CHP. Both candidates had initially declared victory and claimed that they would hold victory speeches early on in the evening.

Aftermath

The CHP began a large-scale ballot-checking operation, fielding requests for recounts to the

(YSK) while hundreds of volunteers analysed ballot box data to uncover any irregularities in recording the numbers of votes won by each candidate. The CHP claimed that they had uncovered attempts in large numbers of ballot boxes to record the votes incorrectly, with some ballot boxes apparently recording the CHP's votes at nearly zero while others recorded an unexplainably large vote count for the AKP. It was later announced that the CHP had uncovered enough irregularities in the ballot box records to alter the final result and give Yavaş a victory in the election. Regardless, the YSK refused the CHP's requests for a recount and declared the election result as final, sparking large pro-democracy protests outside the YSK headquarters.

Legal challenges

Mansur Yavaş declared his intention to challenge the YSK's decision to uphold the result at the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...

, with the intention to even consult the

(ECHR) should the Constitutional Court reject his case. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court rejected Yavaş's legal claims on 23 July 2014, claiming that it did not have the authority to rule on election results. The Court also stated that the ECHR could only rule on individual human rights cases and challenging election results would not be within its remit either. Nevertheless, Yavaş filed a case to the ECHR in April 2015.

Results

References

{{reflist, 30em 2014 Turkish local elections 2010s in Ankara