Turkey's opposition leader turns to European court to reverse referendum results

Turkey’s main opposition leader yesterday launched a European court appeal over the results of last April’s referendum by stepping up his challenge to the government as he nears the end of a protest march which began last month.

On the 20th day of his march, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), signed an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against the election board’s decision to accept unstamped ballots in the 16 April referendum.

Opposition parties claim that the poll was deeply flawed and European election observers said the decision to allow unstamped ballot papers to be counted had removed a main safeguard against voting fraud.

Read: Turkey’s main opposition party to vote no in referendum

Kilicdaroglu told reporters that “Turkey has rapidly turned into a [one-] party state in wake of the failed coup on July 15 2016, set out on the latest leg of the march from the city of Izmit, around 100 kilometres along the coast to the east of central Istanbul. The march was triggered by the jailing of a CHP deputy on spying charges.

As the protesters advance, Erdogan has stepped up his attacks on the march, saying the CHP was no longer acting as a political opposition.

“We can see that they have reached the point of acting together with terror groups and those powers which provoke them against our country,” he was reported by Reuters as saying in a speech to officials from his ruling AK Party on Saturday.