OSCE observers meet Turkey’s opposition parties

ANKARA

AA Photo

A delegation of observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has held meetings with executives from opposition parties in Turkey’s parliament ahead of the June 7 general elections.

The OSCE delegation held separate, closed-door meetings with members of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on April 15, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Speaking to reporters before their meeting, CHP Deputy Parliamentary Group Chair Levent Gök said doubts over the holding of a safe and just election had grown.

“Growing doubts, the high possibility of holding the election in an environment which will not be democratic under pressure from the ruling party and the fact that indications for such [a situation] have been seen by the entire world led the OSCE to send an observer delegation to the June 7 election in Turkey,” Gök said.

Gök listed concerns over impartiality of the president and censorship and monopolization in media, as well as state-run Turkish Radio Television’s (TRT) refusal to air an election campaign advertisement by the CHP “because it directly targets the government” among the “unfair practices” that they would discuss with the OSCE team.

For his part, also speaking before their meeting with the OSCE, Nazmi Gür, the deputy co-leader of the HDP in charge of external affairs, underlined that the 10 percent election threshold for a party to be represented in parliament would be decisive in the election.

The HDP attaches high importance to having international observers present for the election given the import of the polls, Gür said.