An American official spokesman says they already have concerns that the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24 will be flawed because the polls will be held under a state of emergency.
In Europe the Netherlands and Austria are banning any campaigning for the Turks who live in their respective countries and have a right to vote in the Turkish polls.
It all boil downs to the fact that the Western leaders see clearly that the democratic elections in Turkey will produce yet another Erdoğan administration and they simply do not want to stomach this. Thus they will once again do everything to interfere in the elections campaign, in the Turkish polls and thus Turkey's domestic affairs.
These are the same leaders and administrations that actively rallied against the changing of the constitution in 2017 that ushered Turkey into a presidential system of government.
These leaders see very clearly that the election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the first president of the new system is a foregone conclusion and they see that the people they support in opposition are in complete disarray, are clumsy and weak and thus they will make no impact in the June 24 polls. So they opt to stall Erdoğan in a war of attrition.
This is all wrong. Turkey is a part of the Western alliance system and thus is a viable democracy that has been functioning quite well in the past 16 years despite excessive outside interference. Turkey has had to take extraordinary measures simply because it was subjected to numerous shocks, the last being the bloody coup attempt of July 15, 2016. Before that Turkey has had to endure deadly suicide bomb attacks, an uprising in some cities and townships in southeastern Turkey instigated by the PKK terrorists, and its judiciary and some security units were hijacked by the Gülenist terrorist organization.
The Western leaders have declared state of emergency in their own countries and have gone to elections under such rule like in France. So it is hardly a valid argument accusing Turkey of holding elections under state of emergency.
On the contrary the fact that we have a state of emergency, especially in southeastern Turkey, will eliminate any chance by the PKK to hijack the elections in those regions. They will not be able to intimidate our citizens in the region to vote for pro-PKK candidates. Yet it seems the Western powers feel the PKK should be allowed to dominate these elections in the southeastern provinces and thus bring PKK militants into the Turkish parliament who will do nothing but stage violent scenes in Parliament and disrupt the democratic process.
Turkish elections are one of the best democratic exercises in the Western political scene. Turkish people spontaneously flock to the polling stations and our participation rates are never below the 80 percent mark. Yet in Europe this is all the way down to 35 percent which means the governments are hardly representative of the masses.
Turkish polls despite Western interference and some distractions by the opposition parties will be fair and square. And public opinion polls show Erdoğan will be elected head of the executive most probably in the first round. The West has to start looking into the prospects of living with Erdoğan instead of trying to get rid of this through anti-democratic means.
