AKP, CHP in row over voter information

ANKARA

Remarks by Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu that his party has more voter information than the Supreme Election Board (YSK) has ramped up a war of words between the main opposition party and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“The voter information we have is not even in the hands of the Supreme Election Board. We know each voter; the voters who will go to the ballot box for the first time, we know their houses and addresses, and we look at their place of birth,” Kılıçdaroğlu said on Aug. 8.

“How did Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu access information that was not in the hands of the YSK? How did he do this?” the spokesperson of the AKP, Ömer Çelik said on Aug 8.

CHP spokesperson Faik Öztrak responded by saying that the YSK sends the raw data on the voter lists to the parties without any quality tests or analysis.

“We check the raw data from this YSK. We test the consistency of these data with the information coming from our provincial and district organizations. We enrich it with the information we have. And we are correcting the mistakes of the YSK,” he added.

“What is the political and legal problem in this? After that, we receive them and share them with the YSK. We send the correct information to the YSK. According to them, YSK is correcting these data,” Öztrak noted.

AKP’s Çelik continued his criticisms against the CHP and said the statement by Kılıçdaroğlu was “very problematic” as he had argued that the main opposition party has data that is not in YSK.

A statement by the Interior Ministry on Aug. 10 called on Kılıçdaroğlu to reveal which information was not in the hands of the YSK but the CHP.

“Please explain to the public the source of this information, instead of targeting the institutions, creating suspicion, or suspecting them. If the subject you are talking about is the classification of the information that the YSK gives to political parties every year, apologize immediately for misleading the public and implicating the institutions,” said the ministry.

If the specified issues are not disclosed, the ministry will file a criminal complaint, since obtaining personal data in violation of the legislation is not only a legal case but also means that our citizens are clearly flagged, said the statement.