The Turkish opposition announces a deployment of half a million of its own observers amid fears of electoral fraud

ANKARA, 29 Apr. (DPA/EP) –

The National Alliance, the great Turkish opposition coalition, will deploy half a million of its observers on May 14 in the country’s crucial presidential elections, where the country’s president, Recep Tayip Erdogan, faces a very close race to revalidate his mandate and has unleashed among its critics the fear of possible electoral fraud.

In fact, this same Friday, his Interior Minister, Suleiman Soylu, warned that the elections could hide a “coup d’état” by the West in statements made days after he demanded that the United States “remove its dirty hands from the country “.

For this reason, the spokesman for the main coalition party, the Republican People’s Party, Kaan Slici, has announced his intention to “mobilize half a million people throughout the 50,000 polling stations” that will open on the 14th May in the face of “serious concerns” about electoral security that now exist within the alliance.

In previous elections, including the 2019 local elections, the official Turkish news agency, Anatolia, was accused of alleged data manipulation, for which the alliance has declared its intention to present its own data.

Provisional polls predict, at the very least, a very close race between Erdogan and the leader of the Republican People’s Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who leads eight of the ten polls published in recent days, according to a compilation of polls collected this week by Euronews.

Kilicdaroglu hovers between roughly 47 and 49 percent in the Metropoll, Gezici, ORC, ALF, MAK, Aksoy, AR-G, and Yöneylem polls, while Erdogan leads with roughly the same percentage range. Optimar and SONAR surveys.