A look at the interesting electoral laws in Türkiye

according to the international group Tasnim news agency, on Next Sunday is the election day in Turkey, and the parties of this country are looking for votes from 62 million eligible citizens. Turkey has special election laws and a citizen cannot cast his vote at any place he wants just based on his eligibility to vote and his birth certificate and identity documents. This is where party and political loyalty comes into play and a citizen may pay a few thousand liras to go to a place that is officially registered as his place of residence. In other words, according to Turkish election laws, the voter must vote in the place that the Supreme Election Institution and the Ministry of Interior have determined.

Voting place A citizen is in the same place where he has been residing for the last six months. As a result, millions of people who have traveled to Istanbul and other provinces for travel and entertainment want to return to their hometown and vote as soon as possible.

The “mukhtars” of neighborhoods and villages, for which perhaps the Persian equivalent of Dehdar and the network of Shahriaris can be suggested, have a representative office in every neighborhood of the city, and when, for example, a person migrates from one city to another or even moves from one neighborhood to another, he is obliged to inform the mukhtar of that neighborhood about his new residence so that he can enter the information in the large network of the Ministry of Interior. In this way, Turkish people are forced to adjust and coordinate their travel plans with the election schedule. Because if on the day of voting, they go to a branch where their name and residence information is not registered, they will not have the right to vote.

One ​​of the advantages of this system election, is that the vote outside the place of residence does not enter the box, and the heads of the boxes, know in advance the maximum number of votes that are going to be cast into the box. For example, the person in charge of the fund number 4201 in the Kortalan neighborhood in Beyuk Cekmece, Istanbul, knows that only 2,535 citizens in that neighborhood have the right to vote. As a result, always on the eve of elections, finding a bus ticket to return to the place of residence becomes a serious problem.

In a special report, the newspaper published in Ankara announced that in the past few days; The line to buy bus tickets has multiplied at once. Citizens from the east and southeast of Termeya, and especially from Sirte, Batman and Aghri, have gone to Istanbul and Ankara in western Turkey, they want to return home with a 20 or even 24-hour land journey in order to be able to vote.

Qar newspaper also mentioned that hundreds of thousands of Kurds from the east and southeast; The residents of Anatolia and the residents of the provinces known as the Karadeniz region or the Black Sea are trying to buy bus and plane tickets, and almost none of the companies and agencies in Istanbul, Antalya, Ankara, and Izmir have tickets to offer, and all their trips are booked.

Do Turkish people have to vote?

According to Article 25 Law No. 298 of the Basic Provisions of Elections and Electoral Lists, voting in elections is a mandatory legal duty. Voting is mandatory for citizens, and Turkey’s Supreme Election Authority has the right to fine citizens who do not vote. The amount of the fine is 300 liras. But there are two important points about the implementation of this law. First, fines are not normally charged and the Supreme Election Authority waives this right. Second, most Turkish people usually have a political orientation and prejudice and party favoritism, and they definitely vote. In such a way that participation in elections in this country is usually above 85%, and such a thing cannot be related to the fear of paying a fine. Because many times, a citizen pays more than 3 thousand liras to return to his place of residence and to be able to use the right to vote, or he leaves his recreational trip and mission unfinished, and if he does not want to participate in the election , could solve this problem with a fine of three hundred lira.

Another interesting point about the return of Turkish citizens to their place of residence is that the political parties of this The country also reaches into their pockets and by renting dozens and sometimes hundreds of buses and minibuses, they transport their fans from different provinces to their places of residence so that they don’t miss out on voting.
More than 20 million Turkish citizens, In exchange for official membership in a political party, they pay a monthly subscription fee to support the party, and this is one of the important financial sources that is of great importance for the administration of party organizations in 81 provinces of Turkey.
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