Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Monday that 594,000 security personnel would be deployed to ensure a safe voting process during the March 31 municipal elections.
Yerlikaya held a news conference in the capital, Ankara, about election measures. He stated that they were working to ensure a peaceful and safe environment for local elections “to enable people to reflect their will fully.”
On March 31, some 324,000 members of the Turkish National Police, 197,000 staff from Gendarmerie Command, 2,850 members of the Coast Guard Command, 53,000 village guards, and another 17,000 volunteer village guards will be stationed across Türkiye.
Municipal elections are mostly a calm affair for millions, though occasional brawls and even shootings occur in and around some polling stations between supporters of rival parties. Yerlikaya said they had already sent instructions to local governorates in 81 provinces for election-related measures, both for voters and electoral officials. The Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) oversees the vote and is the ultimate authority to announce the formal results of the elections, while the Interior Ministry handles the security aspect.
Yerlikaya said one of his deputies would head the Election Coordination Committee, which will be set up exclusively for the elections. Each branch of the security forces will have its own operation center to ensure smooth coordination of election day security.
Some 64 million eligible voters will elect new mayors and other office-holders in the local governments of 81 provinces and their districts.
The polls are taking place nearly a year after the presidential and parliamentary elections were held in May this year and they seem to hold as much of a stake for the competing parties.
Türkiye’s local elections, which occur every five years, cover the mayoral seats of metropolitan cities, provinces, provincial districts and towns, as well as the mukhtars of villages and neighborhoods, the board of alderman, and members of city councils and municipal boards.
Along with security on the ground, the safety of cyberspace is also important for Türkiye, which battles election-related disinformation through a government agency specifically tasked with this fight. Disinformation plaguing social media covers all political parties regardless of their ideology. Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, has set up teams of experts to prevent any unlawful intervention in elections, notably the upcoming local vote in Türkiye, according to a Meta official.
“In addition to constantly updating our election policies and detecting proactive threats, we help prevent any intervention in elections or voters by removing content that violates our community standards,” Meta Türkiye and Azerbaijan Public Policies Director Sezen Yeşil told Anadolu Agency (AA) a week ahead of the poll. “Our experts are focusing on coordinated ill-use to intervene in public discourse,” Yeşil explained. “We immediately take action when we detect such activity on our platforms, especially when it’s about elections.” She said Meta had advanced security operations to bust manipulation campaigns and unearth emerging threats, listing the Advertisement Library as one example. Meta adds all political or election-based ads to this library to be preserved for seven years, allowing the public to see which ads are in circulation, their targets and how much they’ve cost.
