Electoral fraud and violence during the June 2015 Turkish general election
[8] In May, a CHP election stand in Erzurum was blocked by large police lorries with officers demanding that party flags be removed from the area.
Erzurum's front-running CHP candidate protested the decision and asked why large lorries accompanied the officers who were simply demanding party activists to take down flags.
Although the municipality claimed that the salon lacked the required legal documents, the fact that it had only been sealed after the MHP rented it out led to party activists describing the situation as a 'black mark' in the history of democracy.
[11] The AKP have also attempted to increase participation and ratings for their electoral rallies and televised interviews with key government politicians through cold calling.
On 25 May, a message sent out to millions of people around Turkey by the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality advertised a TV programme where the Mayor Melih Gökçek was due to make 'important statements'.
In preparation for the general election, AKP founder and former leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held rallies in numerous provinces and criticised the opposition.
"[15] The admission that Erdoğan was using state finances to fund AKP-leaning rallies was proven to be heavily controversial, with the HDP complaining to the Supreme Electoral Commission, though their complaint was rejected soon after.
[18] On 17 May, it emerged that a sudden shortage of İETT public busses in Istanbul was a result of many being taken out of service to provide a shuttle between different towns and the AKP's electoral rally in the Maltepe district.
[20] On 7 April, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and 166 other websites were blocked for distributing the images of DHKP-C terrorists taking Istanbul prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage.
[22] Allegations were also made that social media sites were blocked to stop potential incriminating evidence regarding the government's involvement in the hostage crisis from emerging.
[26] A CHP delegate to the media regulator RTÜK, Ali Öztunç, later claimed that the advert had not broken any laws and that the AKP was directly behind the censorship.
Energy minister Taner Yıldız caused outrage by blaming the power outages in 21 different provinces on a cat entering a transformer, which the BBC initially thought was an April fools joke.
[33] The opposition has alleged that electricity cuts on election nights are intentional and the commotion they cause is used to manipulate the counting process in the governments favour.
[35] In Adana, 28,800 voters were erased from electoral register after the metropolitan municipality conducted a controversial opinion poll about peoples' voting intentions for the general election.
Many pollsters lack official websites and instead announce poll results on Facebook or Twitter, while some companies such as 'Politic's Communication and Research' have grammatical errors in their names that place their existence in doubt.
[40] Numerous polling companies are also owned by politicians, for example the owner of ANAR is AKP former Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay.
One polling company, KONDA, issued a letter of apology after predicting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's vote to be above 57% three days before the election, whereas the actual result was 51.8%.
[44] The CHP deputy leader Sezgin Tanrıkulu proposed a new law that would inflict a penalty fine on polling companies that had margins of error above 5 or 6% and declare them 'biased'.
In ensuring clashes, protesters were met with tear gas and water cannon, to which some activists responded by throwing stones and firecrackers at the security forces.
[63] CHP Member of Parliament Aykut Erdoğdu broke his hand after punching and breaking the class of a police escort vehicle containing arrested demonstrators, demanding to be taken with them.
[64] An armed individual was also arrested after entering the AKP Kartal district headquarters also in Istanbul with unknown intentions, shooting what was later determined to be blank rounds and hanging a Turkish flag accompanied with a sword.
[69] On 19 April, a group of around 20 people, presumed to be Kurdish nationalists, attacked Patriotic Party parliamentary candidate Hasan Atilla Uğur.
[76] On 3 May, a delegation of AKP parliamentary candidates, youth and women's wing members visiting Van were booed and greeted with hostility by civilians.
[83] During the power-cut, two left-wing militants from the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) infiltrated the Istanbul Justice Palace and abducted a prosecutor responsible for investigating the death of Berkin Elvan, who had been shot by police during the 2013 Gezi Park protests.
[85] The hostage crisis led to a debate about how militants managed to enter what currently is the largest courthouse in Europe with guns and flags without being stopped, as well as whether the incident and the massive power outage were related.
Amid speculation that the government would use the incident to their own political gain, former Deputy Prime Minister Emrullah İşler claimed in a tweet that the militants were from the same organisation as the Gezi Park protesters in 2013.
[89] During the run-up to the election, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared his intentions to hold rallies in all 81 Provinces of Turkey under the guise of 'public openings'.
Despite numerous formal complaints by the CHP, MHP and HDP, the Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey refused to stop Erdoğan from holding his rallies.
[93] Erdoğan has also implicitly called for the electorate to grant the AKP at least 400 Members of Parliament in the general election, and admitted that his rallies were being funded by public money.
It emerged that most of the new projects or foundations of new infrastructure that Erdoğan had claimed to inaugurate did not actually exist, with no lists of official openings being made available for the rallies.
