Critics in Turkey Question Credibility of Judges Who Oversaw Vote<br />At 4:10 p.m. — with counting already underway in eastern Turkey<br />and 50 minutes before the polls would close in populous western Turkey — Recep Ozer, the observer representing Mr. Erdogan’s party, asked the board to retroactively allow election officials to count unstamped ballots.<br />By PATRICK KINGSLEYAPRIL 25, 2017<br />ANKARA, Turkey — The credibility of the judges who oversaw Turkey’s referendum last week is being called into question<br />because most of them were hastily appointed when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan purged the judiciary after last summer’s failed coup.<br />Koray Caliskan said that The fact that eight of the 11 judges on the board were appointed during a crackdown on the judiciary,<br />and amid such an environment of fear, raises questions about their neutrality and their willingness to vote against the government,<br />But the legitimacy of Mr. Erdogan’s victory has been tainted by accusations of voter fraud at polling stations across the country —<br />and by an odd series of erratic decisions on the day of the vote by the judges who head the electoral commission.<br />Instead, he said he had information that thousands of legitimate voters had innocently used invalid ballots<br />because inexperienced election officials did not realize the ballots needed to be stamped, or had not had time to do so.<br />But the single biggest controversy was the last-minute decision by the electoral commission to override electoral law and allow officials to count what the opposition says are millions of votes<br />that lacked an official stamp proving their authenticity.
