I have followed the Turkish elections on the night from Sunday to Monday which turned into a gripping account of prime minister Erdogan trying to steal the elections while most of the people were sleeping. Orchestrated blackouts had drawn out the count. The twitter block didn’t prevent activism from spreading but did reduce the reach of its effects. Those that knew and cared about it were at the counting locations trying to safeguard the ballots and the tallies.
People not abandoning votes till entered into online system. ~6a. MT @Partizan4eva 4 saattir bekliyoruz! #sandıktayım pic.twitter.com/baRd3q6dRK
— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) March 31, 2014
The tally notes were shared to be able to corroborate them with entries into the online result system. Most of those results have been off, some by a small amount, some by a larger amount.
Turkey’s Citizen journos have been documenting ballot box results. Important with all the swirling Qs. RT @140journos pic.twitter.com/kYu0XGewXI
— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) March 31, 2014
Altogether it was a mess and from the cross section of tallies I’ve seen it’s hard to believe that the AKP would have fully swept Istanbul and Ankara. What follows now is a long process of chasing the issue into Turkey’s notoriously horrible judicial system. It is unclear whether that will have an effect other than reducing the trust people in Turkey have in institutions even further.
Yesterday I learned unexpectedly but viscerally that democracy is worth defending. It’s not the best feeling but I’d still recommend it.
— Alper Çuğun (@alper) March 31, 2014
What that night did teach me after the lukewarm Dutch municipal elections is that democracy is an institution worth defending both when things are calm but especially when times are tough. I am finally allowed to participate in a vote in Berlin. The European Parliament elections may be lackluster but I’ll take whatever little democracy I’m given.
I’ll post back here about how that vote and its count goes.
Something else that is noteworthy is the dismal coverage the elections got in the Dutch mainstream media. For any kind of news event that you are interested in, following tweets either in the local language or by English speaking commentators on the ground provides a far better experience. What I saw on Dutch television and in Dutch newspapers was predictable, shallow, disconnected and actively shameful.
