{"id":177892,"date":"2019-05-11T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/05\/11\/nope-no-attempt-to-overturn-the-will-of-the-voters-here\/"},"modified":"2019-05-11T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T23:31:00","slug":"nope-no-attempt-to-overturn-the-will-of-the-voters-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/05\/11\/nope-no-attempt-to-overturn-the-will-of-the-voters-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Nope.  No Attempt to Overturn the Will of the Voters Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Turkish election board has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/turkish-election-board-orders-new-vote-for-istanbul-mayor-after-ruling-party-loss\/2019\/05\/06\/3e22c8c2-701d-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html\">called for new elections for Istanbul mayor after Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan&#8217;s preferred candidate lost<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Turkey\u2019s election board announced Monday that it was invalidating the results of Istanbul\u2019s mayoral race, which had dealt President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s party a stinging defeat. A new election will be held late next month, the board said. <\/p>\n<p>Erdogan\u2019s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/erdogans-party-challenges-election-results-after-apparent-defeat-in-turkeys-cities\/2019\/04\/02\/377c4c1e-556a-11e9-aa83-504f086bf5d6_story.html?utm_term=.2ca857127721\">appealed for the cancellation<\/a> of the March 31 vote over what it deemed irregularities. The election board ruled Monday that some polling officials overseeing that race were not civil servants, in violation of the law, according to Turkey\u2019s state-run news \u00adagency. <\/p>\n<p>Results last month showed that an opposition challenger, Ekrem Imamoglu, had narrowly defeated Binali Yildirim, the AKP mayoral candidate, in the Istanbul race. Erdogan\u2019s party also suffered rare losses in local elections in several other cities, including Ankara, Turkey\u2019s capital. <\/p>\n<p>The AKP\u2019s extraordinary appeal to redo the Istanbul election immediately drew criticism that Erdogan and his party were willing to undermine confidence in Turkey\u2019s democracy to serve a narrow goal: retaining control of Turkey\u2019s largest city, along with the financial and patronage networks that have benefited the AKP over decades.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s be clear here:&nbsp; We are going to see all the powers of the state trying to tilt this election in favor of the AKP candidate.<\/p>\n<p>They cannot afford to lose the patronage in Istanbul city government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Turkish election board has called for new elections for Istanbul mayor after Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan&#8217;s preferred candidate lost: Turkey\u2019s election board announced Monday that it was invalidating the results of Istanbul\u2019s mayoral race, which had dealt President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s party a stinging defeat. A new election will be held late next month, the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,375,697,374],"class_list":["post-177892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-elections","tag-near-east","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}