JINHA

NEWS CENTER – In the latest update on rights violations in Turkey's election, poll observers are sending reports of soldiers seizing ballot boxes and police denying observers access to the polls. All of the following reports come from provinces in Northern Kurdistan (Turkey).

Soldiers have seized ballot boxes in four separate villages near the town of Hamamlar in Bingöl province, according to reports from the province.

Delegations of observers have faced restrictions on their operations in several locations. In the province of Siirt, police have refused observers from the Human Rights Association (İHD) access to the polls. Similarly in the province of Batman, police are refusing an İHD delegation access.

Soldiers in the district of Midyat, in Mardin province, are denying a Norwegian delegation access to the polls, claiming that they do not have a legal right to observer. In the province of Siirt, military police have refused a Danish delegation access to the Gölköy Village, claiming the have orders from the Supreme Electoral Council. A delegation from Marseilles has been removed from a polling station in the village of Hasköy, near Muş.

In Diyarbakır's Yenişehir district, HDP poll observers are facing arrest. A woman voting in the city of Kızıltepe, in Mardin province, reports that an AKP supporter threatened her and took her picture at the polls.

There is a heavy, possibly excessive presence of soldiers and police at a polling station in the city of Şırnak as well as in Hazro, a district of Diyarbakır province.

(ekip/şö-za/fk/zd/cm)