Did Erdoǧan cheat in the 2018 Turkish election?
Cheating means, for example:
As a Turkish liberal who does not support conservatives and as a voter who spent many times watching the opposition speeches my answer is: It depends what you call cheating.
If you mean stealing votes or adding more votes than there are, then as the liberal opposition candidate Mr. Ince said, "no". Even though there were some reports of illegal actions going on, the difference in votes was ~10 million votes, which is thousand times more than the possible illegal things which might happened.
But meanwhile the president Mr. Erdoğan used all government resources (like planes etc... which of course we liberals also pay with our taxes) opposition mostly run their campaign with our donations. Many TV channels didn't give screen time to opposition leaders. Since not only public but also most of the private media is under Mr. Erdoğan's control, it was totally unfair. "Doğan Media", probably Turkey's biggest media organisation, which was the last media organization which didn't support any group directly was sold to an Erdoğan supporter recently.
Please use google translate to see the time distribution between opposition and Mr. Erdoğan in government public TV.
Bottom line: The AKP get ~40 hours all other opposition get only ~3 hours. It is much more worse in government controlled private media.
There were more things which I think were totally unfair (like election being run while martial law is going on etc...). But I don't want to nag about them.
As a proud Turkish citizen I still respect conservatives I hope these things will be more fair in the future. These are our problems which we have to solve ourselves. Also despite unfair things, we should self criticize as liberals. We have to work harder and also try to anticipate and understand our conservative citizens.
... I know the situation in Turkey is much worse ... - citation needed.
It's unclear. There have yet to be credible international election observers who have made a statement as to the accuracy of the vote count. Some opposition politicians have contested the counts of the vote, but their own election observers counted similar tallies. Some videos have surfaced showing alleged voter fraud, with the opposition claiming vote-rigging. These allegations have yet to be independently verified. From what I was able to find online, there haven't been any "Egypt-like" actions from Erdogan to limit who can run against him--there was a legal and organized opposition. This is not to say the candidates were on a perfectly level playing field, but as of now there has not been credible evidence of large-scale voter fraud.
UPDATE: The OSCE has issued a statement clarifying the extent of unfairness within this election. They list no voter fraud, and note that the people were given a choice, but note that state-run media heavily favored Erdogan and that the opposition did not get fair time. However, they cited the 87% voter turnout as a positive sign for Turkish democracy, as 87% is well above the average voter participation for most democratic elections.
As noted, offical analysis from foreign observers will come later. However the Opposition leader Mr Ince, said that "the election was unfair" but "there was no significant difference between official results and his party's figures, and therefore he would accept the outcome". (BBC)
There have been widespread reports of voter fraud, intimidation, and other unfair practices. Mr Erdogan had the advantages of being an incumbent and has jailed numerous opposition activists, and journalists. It was not "a level playing ground". But it is not clear if this should invalidate the result.
There have been widespread reports of voter fraud, intimidation, and other unfair practices. Mr Erdogan had the advantages of being an incumbent and has jailed numerous opposition activists, and journalists. - citation needed.
For the election day, the answer is NO. He didn't (or couldn't) cheat, we didn't let him.
Jun 26, 2018 was the due date to object to the election results. All parties had objections in some provinces, but none of them are major.
Since the only reference I have is in Turkish, I'll try to summarize.
The most common objection is for the provinces, where one of the MPs has been barely elected. For example, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) lost one MP to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) by 370 votes in Elazig province. If the Supreme Election Council (YSK) accepts the objection, the votes in this province will be re-counted.
There were 14K invalid votes in Mugla province. AKP claims that it was around 8K in the previous elections. They requested the invalid votes to be re-evaluated. There are similar objections from the other parties as well (e.g. Iyi Party in Burdur province).
The Republican People's Party (CHP) say that there is 8K difference between the presidential and parliamentary votes in Düzce province. They also add that the reason of the difference is not mentioned in the record books.
According to the news on Jun 27, YSK is re-evaluating some ballot boxes in 14 provinces.
In addition to these objections, totally 362 incidents happened during the election day. It was the most peaceful one of the last four elections.
Previous ones:
This election was more secure thanks to these two organizations.
Vote and Beyond (Turkish: Oy ve Ötesi): It's a neutral foundation observing ballot boxes. They were organized in all of 81 provinces (it was 46 in 2015). They are expected to present a final report within a few days.
Fair Election Platform (Turkish: Adil Seçim Platformu): This platform was established by the opposition parties and several NGOs just before this election. They ensured that each ballot box has at least one board member from the opposition.
Note: My answer only includes the election day. Please see the other answers for the other parts of the question, which I don't have any addition.
In addition to the other answers here, there have been reports of OSCE election monitors from outside Turkey being barred from entry, which has stoked concerns of how free and fair the elections were. It is rather questionable as to why Turkish authorities felt the need to deny entry to election monitors, from Germany and Sweden, who both happen to have large Turkish diasporas.
İnce's comment about fraud not amounting to ten million votes is specious. The important thing was not the difference between Erdoğan and İnce's vote; it was the number of votes in excess of 50%+1 that allowed Erdoğan to win in the first round; had the poll gone to a second round the whole opposition could be expected to rally round İnce. The minimum vote needed to win in the first round was half of the number of votes cast 50,730,337, which is 25,365,169. The official results put Erdoğan's vote at 26,068,146 or a mere 702,977 above this figure. I believe that the number of fraudulent votes was certainly more than this, given, for example, that it has been established that there are large numbers of bogus voters included on the voters' rolls used to cast extra votes for the ruling party by people voting with false IDs. The number of such bogus voters is estimated to be two million, enough on their own to have prevented Erdoğan having to face İnce in a second round.
From here:
Pekşen, indicating that a citizen obtained his father’s records and different civil registry particulars pertaining to his father were provided on these records and, showing the Directorate of Civil Registry documents, commented, “His father’s name is Osman Fikret, but is Osman Fikri on the record that was issued. His grandfather’s name has also changed. The name of his grandfather, which is Mehmet Nafiz, appears simply as Nafiz. With the same person, shown in all records as having been born on 01.07.1898, appearing on one document as having died on 10.01.1989, he appears to be alive on another document. The same person also appears in different records with different citizenship numbers and is shown to be dead in one record and alive in the other. This is all in civil registry records supplied by the state.”
And in another article from the same source there are indications that, in just one apartment building, the election rolls had 16% more people on them than lived there:
These people were not on the list at the subsequent election, but in the referendum they identified an additional six voters at the apartment! Residing at the apartment are 160 voters. Just think: 26 fake names means that there were 16% more voters.
