We are just days away from electing Turkey’s next president. The agenda of the whole country is politics and we are sure that many of us are wondering what will happen to us. However, one of the most curious issues is the security of the voting boxes where our votes are cast.
Based on what has happened in previous elections, many people want to be sure that similar problems will not occur in the next election and that the elections are ‘safe’.
Researcher and journalist Seçil Türkkan, who compiled her research on elections in her book “Protecting the Ballot Boxes for Election Security”, answered questions about security concerns and how the systems work. Election security and observers were not an area that parties had thought about and worked on much before their volunteers brought this issue to the agenda, but in the 2014 elections it became an agenda embraced especially by opposition parties.
According to Oxford Internet Institute reports, organized manipulation campaigns on social media also took place in at least 81 countries in 2020. In addition to the “social media troll” debate in Turkey, data is needed to speak without fear and judgment. We see that social media will be a big part of the elections. The first thing to do here is not to believe everything we see on the internet to avoid all the pitfalls. As citizens, demanding election security is one of our fundamental rights. The first condition for participation, for our ideas to be represented in Parliament, without ifs and buts.
