Less than 40 days are left for the presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on 14 May. While the candidate lists are being announced, on the other hand, the technical but important details of the election, such as the list of voters and address of polls are also on the agenda.

One of the places where voting will take place is prisons. As Turkey is a country where the capacity of prisons and the number of detainees are increasing rapidly, the election results and security here are of great importance. As of the end of January 2023, there were 341,497 people in prisons in Turkey. According to the data of the Ministry of Justice, 298,975 of these people are convicted and 42,522 are on remand.

The voting process of the prisoners whose addresses are registered in the prisons is done through the ballot boxes set up here. Ballot box officers are appointed in each prison by the YSK (Election Committee). In addition, parties with a group in the parliament can also have ballot box committee members on official assignment. However, since the HDP did not enter the elections under its own name and the Green Left Party is not represented in the Parliament, it will not be able to have any members on the ballot box committees.

Talking about the importance of ballot box security to ANF, ÖHD Prisons Commission co-spokesperson Vedat Ece said: “As we all know, prisons are areas where the prisoner, the officers and everyone inside are completely isolated from the outside world. The only way to ensure ballot box security in these places is for ballot box officers and political party officials assigned by the YSK to do their job properly. It is vital that the final minutes and vote bags are delivered to the district election boards in a healthy manner after the election is over.”