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5-person commission has been formed for keeping and delivering ballot boxes at foreign missions

Turkey is taking every step to ensure the security of votes of Turkish expats, who will participate in the country’s presidential and general elections between June 7 and June 19. Citizens living inside Turkey will vote on June 24.

Supreme Board Election (YSK) has granted Selahattin Demirtas, the jailed presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the right to conduct audio-visual campaigning to be aired on state-run TRT ahead of the June 24 presidential election.

The YSK granted presidential candidates President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Muharrem İnce, Meral Akşener, Temel Karamollaoğlu, Doğu Perinçek and Demirtaş permission to campaign through audio-visual material to appear on state-run TRT.

With less than a month remaining for the presidential and parliamentary elections, resignations continue to plague the newly established Good Party (İP). Most recently, the founding member and general board member of the İP, Ruhat Mengi, resigned from her duties, blaming the party of being different than it is being portrayed

The leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on May 26 unveiled his party’s election manifesto, which vowed to find solutions to “five main problems of Turkey.”

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu read out his party’s 230-page declaration, prepared under the slogan “We are coming for the nation,” in the capital Ankara. He also introduced the CHP candidates running for parliament in the June 24 early elections.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is planning to deploy 28 long-term and 350 short-term observers to follow Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24.

Muharrem İnce, the presidential nominee of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has vowed a new constitution reinstalling a strong parliamentary system guaranteeing democracy and the rule of law if elected in the June 24 snap election. 

İnce unveiled his election manifesto on May 19, the 99th anniversary of the launch of the War of Independence by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey in Samsun, a Black Sea costal city from where Atatürk started a three-year war against occupying forces in 1919.

There are a total of 59.4 million eligible voters in Turkey and abroad, Supreme Election Board (YSK) Chairman Sadi Güven said on May 14. According to Güven, there are 56.34 million eligible voters in Turkey and 3 million Turkish expats entitled to cast their votes in the June 24 snap presidential and parliamentary elections.

The number of first-time voters is 1.65 million, while a total of 180,869 ballot boxes will be set up on polling day, Güven added. Turkish expats will vote in 60 countries at 123 diplomatic representations.

The government conducts and will carry out projects to empower Turkish women whose rights and access to employment are often overlooked in male-dominated society.

In his party's manifesto ahead of the June 24 elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has pledged to end "every tradition of the age of ignorance targeting women." The Ministry of Family and Social Justice already works to empower women with projects to improve gender equality for women, which have lagged behind men in every field, courtesy of a patriarchal mindset.

Muharrem İnce, the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) presidential candidate, has vowed he will never use the presidential powers granted by the 2017 referendum on constitutional amendments in the event that he is elected as president. 

“There are vast powers given to the president. But I will not use them. I will be afraid to,” İnce said at an event with representatives of civil society organizations in the Black Sea province of Trabzon on May 11.