Leaked video showing Erdoğan calling for ‘tight marking’ of HDP goes viral

ISTANBUL

A leaked video showing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan instructing his party’s local organizations to put “tight marking” on voters in order to bring the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) below the 10 percent threshold has gone viral on social media.

The one minute, 39 seconds-long video was recorded during a June 9 meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) neighborhood heads at the party headquarters.

Although the meeting was closed to the public, the AKP’s Topselvi neighborhood head Ahmet Öztürk reportedly shared the video on his own Facebook account.

Öztürk later deleted the post but the video had already gone viral.

“Friends, our party organization must conduct very different work on the HDP. I can’t speak these words outside [publicly]. I am speaking them with you here. Why? Because if the HDP falls below the election threshold it would mean that we would be in a much better place,” Erdoğan is heard saying in the video, before telling his party cadres to put “tight marking” on the voters in each district.

“You know who is who ... If our neighborhood representatives do not know who is who, then they should resign. You will take the voter lists for each ballot box and conduct special work,” he adds.

In another video from the same meeting, Erdoğan could be seen telling party representatives to secure AKP majorities on ballot box monitoring committees in order to “finish the job in Istanbul before it has even started."

"We shouldn't repeat the experience of June 7," Erdoğan also warned, referring to the 2015 election that the AKP lost its parliamentary majority.

Every party must pass the 10 percent threshold in order to enter parliament.

The HDP slammed Erdoğan over the leaked video.

“AKP chairman Erdoğan openly incites people to commit crime. He plans to steal our votes by cheating and pressure to bring us below the election threshold,” the HDP’s official Twitter account stated on June 14.