Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that electoral authorities should annul Istanbul’s local elections due to irregularities, notably over the appointment of ballot-box officials, the pro-government Sabah newspaper reported yesterday.
Initial results showed that the main opposition Republican People’s Party narrowly won control of Turkey’s biggest city in the mayoral elections, seemingly bringing an end to the 25-year rule there by Erdogan’s AK Party and its Islamic predecessors.
Speaking to reporters on his airplane, returning from a trip to Moscow this week, Erdogan said that regulations requiring that ballot-box officials be civil servants had not been met everywhere, with regular workers placed in charge in some places.
“Our colleagues have established this. Naturally, all this casts doubt. If they take a sincere view, this will lead to annulment,” he said.
Any decision to annul the elections would rest with the Turkish High Election Board.
A senior AKP official on Tuesday said that it would demand a new vote in Istanbul after its bid was rejected for a citywide recount of the election results after a series of recounts since the vote on Sunday last week.
Erdogan on Monday said the local elections were marred by “organized crime” at ballot boxes in Istanbul.
The loss of control in the city would be a setback for Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than 16 years.
In a separate report, the newspaper quoted Erdogan as saying that the delivery of Russian S-400 missile defense systems might be brought forward from July, sticking to a purchase that has put Turkey at odds with NATO ally the US.
The S-400s are not compatible with NATO systems and Washington said that Turkey’s purchase of them would compromise the security of F-35 jets, which are built by Lockheed Martin Corp.
Turkey is involved in F-35 production.
Erdogan told reporters on his plane that he and his foreign minister were constantly being asked about the S-400 purchase and being pressured to abandon it.
“We answer that ‘this deal is done, everything is settled.’ The delivery of the S-400 missile defense system was to be in July. Maybe it can be brought forward,” Erdogan said.
On Tuesday, leaders of the US Senate committees on foreign relations and armed services warned Turkey that it risks tough sanctions if it pursues plans to buy the S-400s and threatened further legislative action.
“By the end of the year, Turkey will have either F-35 advanced fighter aircraft on its soil or a Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile defense system. It will not have both,” Republican senators Jim Risch and Jim Inhofe and Democratic senators Bob Menendez and Jack Reed said in a New York Times opinion column.
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