OSCE: Erdoğan Not Impartial In Run-Up To June Elections

A report by observers monitoring the June parliamentary elections in Turkey has pointed out that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan violated his oath of impartiality by conducting an election campaign in favor of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).

In its final report, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) wrote: “The president played an active role in the election campaign, even though under the Constitution he is obliged to be non-partisan and perform his duties without bias.”

“The president attended an extraordinary number of public events, as head of state, along with local officials; however, these events were used as opportunities to campaign in favor of the ruling party and to criticize opposition figures,” the report continued.

Article 103 of the Constitution includes the president's oath and clearly states that the president must assure the public that he or she will remain impartial while performing the duties of the role. The end of the oath states that the president will “perform without bias the functions that I [the president] have assumed.”

The OSCE said that numerous complaints were filed “calling to halt the president's campaign activities and the misuse of administrative resources, including extensive coverage on state television.”

According to the report, Erdoğan's “campaigning contravened campaign rules in the legal framework and is at odds with” the OSCE Copenhagen Document and the Venice Commission's Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters.

In June, observers from the OSCE and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) presented their preliminary post-election statement at a live-streamed news conference in Ankara. All the observers were unified in their criticism of Erdoğan conducting rallies to boost support for the AK Party.

The observers said that the president played an active role in the election campaign, even though the Constitution obliges him to be non-partisan, attending an extraordinary number of public events which were used as opportunities to campaign in favor of the ruling party and to criticize opposition figures.

Turkey's state-run broadcaster, TRT, was accused of giving the lion's share of campaign coverage airtime to the AK Party and Erdoğan ahead of the June 7 general election, leaving Turkey's opposition with little chance to get their messages out to the public via the state-run channels.

Back in June, four Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) members from opposition parties -- Ali Öztunç, Süleyman Demirkan, Esat Çıplak and Ersin Öngel -- warned the TRT administration in a joint statement calling for the state-run channel to maintain impartiality.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)