Forced elections in Istanbul: "The AKP stifles the will of the people"

The Turkish author Elif Shafak criticized the SPIEGEL, the decision of the Electoral Commission sharply, the election of the mayor of Istanbul must be repeated. At the center of her criticism she moves the behavior of the ruling AKP under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"The decision is unfair, undemocratic, against the law and very wrong." Ekrem Imamoglu, the candidate of the opposition CHP party, clearly won the election and was the legitimate mayor of Istanbul. But the AKP government under Erdogan has put extreme pressure on the election commission after the defeat to annul the election in Istanbul: "That's unacceptable," said Shafak.

Tim Wegner / DER SPIEGEL

Elif Shafak: "The decision is unfair, undemocratic"

The supreme electoral authority had ordered new elections in Istanbul at the request of Erdogan's AKP. For the first time in 25 years, the ruling party lost the mayor's office in Istanbul to the opposition in the local elections on March 31. Afterwards, Erdogan had talked about organized corruption and disagreements at the ballot boxes.

Shafak: "I hope Imamoglu will get even more votes"

"Millions of people have voted, countless people have been monitoring nights next to the polls to make sure the elections are done correctly," Shafak told SPIEGEL. "Later, the AKP government is damaging this process, with the AKP campaigning with the slogan that it represents the will of the people, but it does exactly the opposite, trampling on the will of the people and suffocating it." There is no basis for this.

Elif Shafak is not for the first time critical of politics and Turkish society under Erdogan. In a guest article for the SPIEGEL in 2017, she wrote that Turkey has become more nationalist and more religious, that politics are more authoritarian, that society is divided. However, in the case of the electoral return in Istanbul, she has hope: "The people of Istanbul will vote again and I hope this time Ekrem Imamoglu will get even more votes than before."

In her novel "The Bastard of Istanbul" Shafak triggered a major controversy in Turkey, the judiciary investigated because of "insulting the Turkishness" against them. Even Elif Shafak's new novel "Unpoken Voices" is set in Istanbul, but in the sixties and seventies. A portrait of the author you read from Saturday in the new issue of SPIEGEL.