 will be in Turkey to observe the local elections scheduled for March 31, upon an official invitation from the Turkish government, Deutsche Welle’s Turkish service (DW Türkçe) reported on Tuesday.){kind=link}
A delegation from the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (CLRAE) will be in Turkey to observe the local elections scheduled for March 31, upon an official invitation from the Turkish government, Deutsche Welle’s Turkish service (DW Türkçe) reported on Tuesday.
Established in 1994, the CLRAE acts as the voice of Europe’s regions and municipalities in the Council of Europe (CoE). It promotes the strengthening of local and regional democracy in all CoE member countries by carrying out monitoring missions of the local and regional authorities in member states and preparing reports on the situation in the country concerned.
The delegation will be in Turkey between March 29 and April 1 and will carry out their mission in 11 provinces, including Ankara, İstanbul and Diyarbakır, on election day.
DW said, citing sources from the CoE, that the delegation will consist of 20 local officials from 16 European countries among members of the CLRAE, in addition to an election observation expert and a technical team of six from the CLRAE secretariat.
The election observation mission will be led by David Eray from Switzerland, with Vladimir Prebilic from Slovenia serving as the deputy chair. Both of them are Turkey co-rapporteurs at the CLRAE.
The mission will be divided into 12 teams on election day, working in Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Antalya, Adana, Mersin, Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Konya, Gaziantep and Kahramanmaraş provinces. These teams will visit various election offices in these cities throughout the day to observe whether the elections are held in a free and fair environment.
The delegation will meet with Turkish members of the CLRAE in the Ankara on March 29. Turkey is represented in the CLRAE by a total of 36 members, 18 full and 18 alternates, including mayors and provincial council members.
On the same day the European delegation will also meet with officials from the Supreme Election Board (YSK), the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change, the Interior Ministry and the Justice Ministry.
They are scheduled to meet with Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş and İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, both from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), on March 30.
As part of their visits to Ankara and İstanbul, the delegation will also engage with national and international civil society organizations and media representatives, according to DW.
The initial findings of the election observation mission will be announced by Eray, who leads the mission, at a press conference in Ankara on April 1. The CLRAE will then prepare a comprehensive observation report on the Turkish local elections, which is not expected to be released before June.
The CLRAE last sent observers to the 2019 local elections in Turkey and stated in its report that they take the fact that many parties have been successful as a positive sign of Turkey’s “democratic resilience.”
They added, however, that they “are not fully convinced that Turkey currently has the free and fair electoral environment which is necessary for genuinely democratic elections in line with European values and principles.”