An investigation has been launched by the Dutch authorities about an election campaign letter sent by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to Turkish citizens living in the country, seeking to find out if the privacy of those Turkish citizens was violated in order to obtain their addresses, the Zaman daily said on Monday.
According to the report, the main opposition Socialist Party (SP) in the Netherlands took the issue to its parliament and many Turkish voters in the country have filed criminal complaints saying their right to privacy had been violated.
Upon receiving the complaints, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) launched an investigation regarding the issue, the report said, adding that the institution will look into whether the AK Party had violated local laws related to privacy while obtaining Turkish voters' addresses.
A campaign letter mailed to Turks living in European countries ahead of the upcoming early general election left many of the recipients worried about how Turkey's ruling party might have obtained their addresses in European cities.
The letter, signed by acting Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, includes campaign promises for the Nov. 1 election, such as reducing the payment for a shortened military service from 6,000 euros to 1,000 euros and the promise of new legislation that will allow Turkish citizens living abroad to elect deputies who also live abroad to represent them in the Turkish Parliament.
The letter then asks the recipients to vote for the AK Party for a “strong and new Turkey.”
According to the Facebook page of the AK Party's Hamburg election bureau, the letter was delivered to 600,000 Turkish citizens living in Europe.
AK Party representatives in the Netherlands and the Netherlands branch of the Union of European Turkish Democrats (UETD), a pro-AK Party group, told the Netherlands office of the Zaman daily last weekend that they had nothing to do with the letter.
The Hamburg election bureau earlier defended the letter in a post on its Facebook page, arguing that political parties have the right to get information about voters' addresses from the Supreme Election Board (YSK).
Fuente: http://www.todayszaman.com/national_netherlands-investigates-ak-party-le...
