Chaos in Turkey: Voting ends in punches - and Erdogan's party wins
A council meeting in one of Turkey's cities turned into a brawl following a dispute over the vote count in the deputy mayor election. After four rounds of voting, the candidate from Erdogan's party won, and control of the municipality passed to the ruling party.
A meeting of the Menderes municipal council in the Izmir province of Turkey deteriorated on Monday into physical confrontations and an exchange of blows between council members, after hours of political tension and a sharp dispute surrounding the results of the vote for the deputy mayor, as reported by the Al-Arabiya network. The elections were held after the elected mayor was arrested and suspended from his position as part of a legal investigation.
In footage published from the council hall, some council members are seen pushing each other and exchanging punches, while others try to separate the sides and restore order. The events concluded an especially tense election day, at the end of which control of the municipality passed to the ruling Justice and Development Party, led by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after the party's candidate, Asuman Sen, was elected to the position of deputy mayor.
The political crisis in Menderes began following the arrest of Mayor Ilkay Cicek and his suspension from his position. According to reports in the Turkish media, the investigation into his case concerns suspicions of corruption, bribery, and abuse of power. It was also reported that after his arrest this month, Cicek resigned from the Republican People's Party, the main opposition party in Turkey.
Following his removal, a special meeting of the city council was convened to elect a deputy mayor who would effectively fill his place. However, the procedure, which was supposed to be routine, quickly turned into a political struggle for control of the municipality, against the backdrop of the complex distribution of power in the council and the lack of a clear majority for one of the factions.
Four candidates entered the race: Asuman Sen on behalf of the Justice and Development Party as part of the "People's Alliance"; Baris Gursoy on behalf of the "Iyi" Party; Muhammed Ali Akar on behalf of the Republican People's Party; and Mustafa Ozturk, who ran as an independent candidate. The council includes representatives from these parties, alongside representatives of the Nationalist Movement Party and independent members, so the alliances between the blocs became a decisive factor.
In the first round of voting, Sen won 12 votes, Gursoy received 10, Akar won five, and Ozturk one. Since none of the candidates achieved the required majority, the voting moved to a second round. In the second round, the tension intensified: Sen received 10 votes, Gursoy nine, Akar five, and Ozturk one, while three ballots were disqualified. Members of the Republican People's Party protested the way the votes were counted and claimed that the disqualified ballots were related to their faction.
Following the argument, members of the Republican People's Party left the hall. After a series of conversations, the voting resumed without them. In the third round, 23 council members participated, and Sen again led with 13 votes compared to 10 for Gursoy. This time too, the result was not enough for a decision, and the procedure moved to a fourth and final round.
Shortly before the opening of the decisive round, the commotion broke out. The argument between the representatives of the factions deteriorated into pushing and an exchange of punches. The meeting was temporarily stopped until order was restored. The videos of the incident were quickly distributed in the media and on social networks in Turkey.
According to reports, the immediate trigger for the brawl was the dispute over the way the voting was conducted and the votes were counted, and especially over the three ballots that were disqualified in the second round. However, behind the technical argument stood a much broader political issue: who will control the Menderes municipality after the temporary removal of the elected mayor.
After the physical confrontation was stopped, the council members returned to voting. In the fourth and final round, Asuman Sen won, who according to most updated reports received 15 votes compared to 12 for Baris Gursoy, alongside one disqualified vote. With the election of Sen to the position of deputy mayor, the management of the Menderes municipality effectively passed to Erdogan's ruling party. Thus ended a stormy political day, which began with an internal election procedure and ended in a filmed brawl and a significant change in the local balance of power.
