Was The Turkish Referendum Vote Rigged?

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan looked very tired and not that cheerful at the victory speech he delivered on the night of April 16, when the referendum results were announced and he was given super-powers by the nation, changing the country’s 94-year-old parliamentarian system. 

He was expecting to get at least 60 percent of votes and go to the snap elections and implement the system right away. But the margin of victory was narrow, 51.4 percent, which gives the signal that a snap election may cause the AKP to lose the election and even the president’s seat. He will have to wait till the polls show a rise in the AKP votes, the party's insiders say.

The opposition parties were quick to denounce voting irregularities, claiming the referendum was rigged. Despite very clear regulatory directions, the Supreme Electoral Council accepted ballots with no official stamp on the back in the middle of the counting process.

Republican People’s Party, CHP, is calling for the cancellation of the referendum. 

The referendum in Turkey did not live up to standards set by the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) announced in its report on Monday. 

Swedish assistant professor at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), Erik Meyersson, contributes to these allegeations with graphics that you need to see:

“At a first glance, when plotting the vote share distribution of the YES vote at the ballot box level was that the “Never-AKPers” were gone. These Never-AKPers are voting groups that have extremely few or literally zero votes for the AKP. In past elections, they have been quite noteworthy.”