Turkish PM slams foreign election observers

İZMİR

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said on June 23 that some foreign election observers "behave like spokespeople of radical political structures."

Speaking to the state-run Anadolu Agency in western province of İzmir, Binali Yıldırım slammed main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu for bringing election security to the agenda before the June 24 polls.

"Our government has been taking necessary measures for the last several months in order to ensure a safe and peaceful election," Yıldırım said.

Responding to a question regarding foreign election observers, Yıldırım said some of them "behave like spokespeople of radical political structures." 

"We believe that this is not correct. We think that it means an intervention in the elections in one way or another," Yıldırım said.

He said no one has the right to cast shadow on these elections in Turkey and it would be a great unfairness to Turkish people.

Yıldırım said the election observers should come and observe the elections "properly and they should not intervene in politics." 

Turkey will go to polls on June 24 for presidential and parliamentary elections.

Nearly 400 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers have reportedly arrived in Turkey to monitor presidential and parliamentary elections.

Two lawmakers from Germany and Sweden were denied entry to Turkey on June 22 for the OSCE observatory mission.

Officials in Turkey had accused Germany’s left-wing Die Linke party lawmaker Andrej Hunko, in his Council of Europe observatory mission for the April 2017 constitutional amendment referendum, of having a biased position in favor of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu posted Hunko’s photograph with PKK flags on his official Twitter account.