Democracy should not be confused with holding elections. A meaningful democratic process is fair, transparent, and open: The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has published an article by Bülent Mumay on the upcoming local elections in Turkey.
The article, available in both German and Turkish, makes a connection between the failing Turkish economy and the expected electoral fraud in the elections scheduled for March 31, 2019. Voting registers contain names of voters who have long passed away, with 6389 registered voters who are between the ages of 100 and 165 years. In some municipalities, voters are registered in places that don’t exist, as in the case of the fifth floor of a four-story building in Istanbul. In the city of Hakkari in southeastern Turkey, 1108 voters are registered as living in a single apartment. Mumay reports that these irregularities are accompanied by an increase in religious propaganda from the ruling AKP party and from president Erdogan.