Voting Scrutiny Stepped Up Ahead of Tight Turkish Election

It's busy in the Istanbul office of the non-partisan election monitoring group, Tukiye Gönüllüleri. Staff are recruiting volunteers to make sure they have enough people to cover Turkey's general elections on May 14. Now in the 81 cities we are organising the system in each voting area. We are having a Tukiye Gönüllüleri person in each school. We need at least 200,000 people. At the moment we haven't reached that point yet. The group trains staff through telephone support, online videos, zoom and face-to-face meetings.

The monitors learn how to collect voting numbers, appalling stations and to collect those figures to ensure the official results are accurate. As a young person I cannot live the way I demand, I cannot live the way I desire and that is why I want to protect my vote in ballot boxes duty here because there are many security gaps. Opinion polls indicate an increasingly tight presidential and parliamentary election. The government says all steps have been taken to ensure a fair vote. Despite this, officials say there are still concerns about voter security. Tukiye Gönüllüleri has recruited a team of lawyers who will help monitor the vote. Volunteers are also being sent to Turkey's earthquake-struck Hatay region.

Volunteers who remained here have concerns saying, I wonder if our votes will be stolen. I wonder if there will be someone who will protect our votes. As volunteers, we are doing whatever we can to ensure that the election is held in a fair way. We currently have nearly 1,000 volunteers here. We've allocated them to voting stations. Observers say Tukiye Gönüllüleri, along with other election monitor groups working with political parties, played a key role in helping to ensure 2019 votes were fairly counted in a hotly contested Istanbul mayoral election. The outcome of that poll resulted in Erdogan's party losing its decades-long domination of the city.

Officials say the 2019 Istanbul vote has motivated some to watch the polls more closely. Instead of thinking everything is going to be bad, you have to go to your school or wherever you are voting and follow what people are doing. That's the main idea, actually. As parties step up their campaigns, some observers say the role of election monitors could be pivotal to the outcome of the polls. Dorian Jones for VOA News, Istanbul. Thank you. Thank you.

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turkish elections