Framing electoral impropriety: the strategic use of allegations of wrong-doing in

election campaigns

ABSTRACT: Concerns about electoral integrity have increasingly become the focus of

political science analysis in recent years, but there has been very little systematic research on

the strategic use of allegations of electoral wrong-doing for political advantage. Drawing on

the literatures on legitimacy and electoral integrity, this paper develops a theoretical

perspective on the strategic use of allegations of electoral impropriety for electoral ends

which, when such allegations are unjustified, constitutes a previously under-explored form of

‘meta-manipulation’. An original dataset, based on press reports from Turkey at the time of

the 2014 local and June 2015 parliamentary elections, is used to test these hypotheses. The

analysis shows that the governing party predominantly accused opposition parties of violent

practices. The opposition parties, on the other hand, used allegations of electoral fraud and

other forms of misconduct coupled with violence accusations against the governing party.

The stylized democratic vision of informed voters has been brought into question in recent

years as the result of a dramatic increase in the amount of information to which the average

citizen is exposed, and a commensurate rise in the variability of information quality. In the

era of ‘post-truth politics’, political commentators and political scientists alike are attuned to

the potential questionability of factual claims made during electoral campaigns. With the

advent of social media, electoral campaigners can bypass the filtering process of traditional

media and access voters directly. Under these circumstances, citizens risk being exposed to a

large number of empirical claims that they do not always have the competence to evaluate,

and information of this sort can and does shape their views.

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One of the most common arenas of campaign discussion is the electoral process itself.

This is true even in established democracies such as the US and the UK, where recent

election campaigns have been shot through with competing claims about possible fraud and

other electoral impropriety.1 It is all the more true in competitive authoritarian contexts where

electoral integrity is often undermined and where new media are used to publicize allegations

of wrong-doing and to mobilize popular support for clean election campaigns or campaigns

to overturn the results of polls deemed to have been seriously marred by fraud.2 Though such

allegations sometimes have a strong grounding in objective truth, especially in less

democratic contexts, they also play an important strategic role as part of campaign strategies.

Allegations of fraud, campaign finance abuses, intimidation, violence and other forms of

electoral manipulation are frequently used to seek to discredit electoral rivals, or to discredit

the outcome of a race that has already been declared.

Yet though the study of electoral integrity and misconduct has blossomed in recent

years,3 we have limited understanding of the strategic use of impropriety allegations in

electoral campaigns. There is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that they can be effective

1 Birch and ElSafoury, “Fraud, Plot, or Collective Delusion? Social Media and Perceptions of Electoral Misconduct in the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum”; Brian J Fogarty, Jessica Curtis and David C Kimball, “News Attention to Voter Fraud in the 2008 and 2012 US Elections.”2 Larry Diamond et al., “Liberation Technology”; Gromping, “Transparent Elections: Domestic Election Monitors, Agenda-Building, and Electoral Integrity”; Howard, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Ifukor, “‘Elections’ or ‘Selections’? Blogging and Twittering the Nigerian 2007 General Elections”; Hänska-Ahy and Shapour, “Who Is Reporting the Protests?: Converging Practices of Citizen Journalists and Two BBC World Service Newsrooms, from Iran’s Election Protests to the Arab Uprisings.”3 Birch, Elect. Malpract.; Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Norris, Why Elections Fail; Schedler, The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism; Simpser, “Does Electoral Manipulation Discourage Voter Turnout? Evidence from Mexico.”

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in shaping popular perceptions;4 however, there have been virtually no systematic assessment

of when, how and why use is made of such strategies by electoral contenders.

This paper focuses on a very common set of strategies: the use of allegations of

electoral malfeasance to undermine the political legitimacy of rival electoral contestants in

the context of competitive authoritarianism. Specifically, we consider the incentives of

political actors to use allegations of misconduct and violence against their opponents. In

many cases, these allegations will be based on actual wrong-doing, but in other cases they

will be exaggerations or baseless claims. Our concern is not to assess electoral impropriety as

such, but to examine the discursive use made in electoral campaigns of accounts of actions

portrayed as illegitimate.

Our core claim is that incumbents are more likely to issue allegations of violence

against their political opponents and associated non-state actors, whereas opposition parties

are more likely to resort to allegations of misconduct. As detailed below, these suppositions

are based on the resources available to incumbent and opposition parties, and the credibility

of different strategies. In as much as impropriety allegations are not based entirely on actual

irregularities, the phenomenon studied here can be seen as a previously under-explored form

of electoral manipulation.

1. Elections, Democracy and Legitimacy

The classic democratic model of electoral competition views elections as contests over

competing policy packages, but in many contexts, particularly those that obtain in less

democratized settings, this model is far from the reality. Elections can and are manipulated in

a wide variety of ways that make them poor mechanisms for realizing democratic principles

4 Birch, “Perceptions of Electoral Fairness and Voter Turnout”; Cantú and García-Ponce, “Partisan Losers’ Effects: Perceptions of Electoral Integrity in Mexico”; Carreras and Irepoǧlu, “Trust in Elections, Vote Buying, and Turnout in Latin America”; Uscinski and Parent, American Conspiracy Theories.

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of equality and accountability. The various ways in which elections are manipulated,

commonly denoted by the terms malpractice or misconduct, and contrasted with electoral

integrity, can be divided into manipulation of electoral laws, manipulation of voter behavior

and manipulation of electoral procedures.5 A burgeoning literature on electoral manipulation

has served to clarify the circumstances under which elections are subject to malpractice, as

well as the measures that can take to prevent this. 6 States with high levels of electoral

misconduct are often referred to as having competitive authoritarian systems where

competitive elections are held but not on a level playing field, such that the ruling party or

grouping enjoys a distinct advantage and is typically able to manipulate electoral outcomes to

ensure that it remains in power.7 Competitive authoritarian settings are ones in which civil

society freedoms and judicial independence are often compromised and where electoral

authorities are frequently suspected of being partisan.8 In short, they are regimes where

legitimacy is at issue.

A survey of relevant literature suggests that in many competitive authoritarian

systems, elections are as much competitions over legitimacy as they are competitions over

policies or competence; electoral campaigns all too often degenerate into slanging matches in

which the opposing sides seek to discredit each other and undermine their claims to be fit to

take part in the political contest.9 In other words, contexts where electoral integrity is 5 Birch, Electoral Malpractice.6 E.g. Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Norris, Why Elections Fail; Norris, Strengthening Electoral Integrity; ehoucq and Kolev, “Varying the Un-Variable: Social Structure, Electoral Formulae, and Election Quality”; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico; Schedler, The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism.7 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War; Schedler, “The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism”; Schedler, “Sources of Competition under Electoral Authoritarianism.”8 Birch and Van Ham, “Getting Away with Foul Play? The Importance of Formal and Informal Oversight Institutions for Electoral Integrity”; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico; Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Norris, Why Elections Fail.9 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War, 7–13; Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Schedler, The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining

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compromised are contexts in which opportunities arise to gain electoral advantage by

manipulating perceptions of the robustness of the electoral process. When the legitimacy of

the electoral process is compromised, this has knock-on effects for the legitimacy of the

regime.10 Though lack of electoral legitimacy has often been observed by analysts of the

politics of competitive authoritarian states,11 there has as yet been little systematic analysis of

the discursive strategies used by electoral contenders to discredit their rivals. If allegations of

impropriety are indeed employed strategically in the electoral arena, this can be viewed as a

form of ‘meta-manipulation’ that stands alongside the well-known list of irregularities which

plague voting processes in competitive authoritarian contexts. Yet it cannot be assumed that

strategies of delegitimization via bogus claims of electoral malfeasance will be universally

used, as they carry costs of exposure by the media or non-acceptance by the electorate; such

claims are only useful to a party when they are believed.

In competitive authoritarian states, institutions are often a major object of political

contestation, even if the outcome of electoral contests is more predictable.12 In other words,

political debate revolves around the legitimacy of the rules of the game rather than the

relative merits of competing policy proposals. The legitimacy of political actors is often also

an object of intense debate, including the electoral contestants themselves, as well as actors

such as the media, civil society, and other non-state groups whose right to contribute to

political discussion is unquestioned in the context of established and well-functioning

democracy.13 McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly relate the way in which the Rwandan genocide of

and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism, 87–98.10 Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters, 113–32.11 Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Schedler, The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism.12 Przeworski, “Democracy as a Contingent Outcome of Conflict”; Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation”; Schedler, The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism.13 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War; Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Norris, Martinez i Coma, and Gromping, “The Year in Elections, 2014”; Schedler, The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism; Randall and Svåsand, “Party Institutionalization in New

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1994 was fuelled by claims that Tutsis were traitors and thus merited death.14 Similarly,

Adrienne Lebas notes how exclusionary rhetoric on the part of the Zimbabwe’s two main

parties – ZANU-PF and the MDC – served to foment a climate of violence where each party

framed popular allegiance to its rival as betraying lack of ‘loyalty to the nation’.15 Lisa

Blaydes likewise recounts how the Mubarak regime in Egypt used both formal and informal

strategies to discredit the Muslim Brotherhood, following its inability to eliminate the

organization through repressive means.16

These strategies are all based on the politics of delegitimization where political

adversaries seek to gain advantage by undermining each other’s supposed legitimacy as

contenders for power. The concept of delegitimization has its origins in psychology, where it

is used to describe a process of classification that “entails removal of a claim or a claimant

from the domain of moral acceptability or moral obligation.17 In politics, legitimacy claims

tend most often to play themselves out in terms of claims to take part in rule. Commenting on

the role of legitimacy in ethnic politics, Horowitz notes that “those whose full membership in

the polity is placed in doubt by exclusionary policies and symbols that connote exclusion are

likely to advance their own symbolic claims to equality”.18 The same logic can be extended to

other forms of political identity, including partisan identity.

Though political delegitimization has been explored in the literature on

authoritarianism, its use in the electoral context has received little attention. Strategies of

electoral delegitimization are typically about framing narratives that associate political

opponents with wrong-doing proximate to the electoral context. Wrong-doing can take a

number of forms, but the most prominent are the types of electoral malpractice discussed

Democracies.”14 McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention., 339.15 Lebas, “Polarization as Craft - Party Formation and State Violence in Zimbabwe,” 420.16 Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt, 148–70.17 Kelman, “Reflections on Social and Psychological Processes of Legitimization Delegitimization,” 58.18 Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 219.

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above, as well as electoral violence (including coercion, intimidation and physical attacks).

Electoral violence can be seen as a subset of electoral malpractice, but it can also be seen as

an alternative strategy designed to sabotage electoral institutions. A small but growing

literature on electoral violence has considered whether misconduct and violence might be

complements or substitutes in the electoral arena, which no clear consensus emerging.19 At

the same time, it has become clear that violence is a qualitatively different type of

manipulation from the fiddling of vote counts or vote-buying, in that violence is typically

designed to obstruct electoral processes.20

For analytic purposes, it is useful to consider why different political actors might use

delegitimization differently.

Our baseline expectation or null hypothesis is that actors of all partisan stripes will

content themselves with highlighting actual instances of malfeasance by their opponents and

will refrain from exaggerating or inventing claims. One might also expect that they would

admit to breaches of electoral integrity on their own part, in order to isolate perpetrators and

prevent an electoral backlash that would result from claims that lack credibility, thus:

H0: Incumbent and opposition actors will report and acknowledge, but will not distort

or invent, actors of electoral misconduct or violence.

For the reasons set out above, there are also reasons to believe that both incumbent

and the opposition might adopt delegitimization strategies. And we posit that the strategies of

the two actors will differ. We hypothesize that those in power and those seeking to dislodge

19 Claes, Electing Peace; Van Ham and Lindberg, From Sticks to Carrots; Collier and Vicente, “Violence, Bribery, and Fraud”; Collier and Vicente, “Votes and Violence”. 20 Birch and Muchlinski, “The Dataset of Countries at Risk of Electoral Violence;” Bhasin and Gandhi, “Timing and Targeting of State Repression in Authoritarian Elections”; Hafner-Burton, Hyde, and Jablonski, “When Do Governments Resort to Election Violence?”; Fjelde and Höglund, “Electoral Institutions and Electoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

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them both have incentives to use the delegitimization strategies that are most plausible, and

that plausibility is in turn conditioned by common patterns of actual electoral manipulation.

Thus the discursive use of delegitimization magnified and in some cases distorts actual

practices. Incumbent actors typically have the greatest ability to manipulate the electoral

machinery and thus to deliver fraud, though this tactic many well be available to the

opposition in those areas of the country that are under opposition control. Both incumbent

and opposition have the resources to shape elections via obstructive techniques that involve

the use of force, though the state’s putative monopoly on the means of force places it at a

coercive advantage.

Let us unpack this argument. In developing delegitimizing narratives, the opposition

benefits from the fact that the electoral machinery is largely controlled by the state, and its

integrity is thus the responsibility of incumbent political leaders. Elections are huge logistical

exercises in which there are always at least some problems, even in the absence of any

manipulative intent. This fact provides oppositions with discursive ammunition. Two

alternative approaches can be delineated, depending on whether the opposition believes it has

a genuine chance of electoral success. First, the opposition may seek to discredit an electoral

contest in advance via allegations of fraud if it believes it has no real chance of electoral

victory. Strategies designed to prime the electorate to suspect fraud have been detected in a

variety of contexts.21 In some settings allegations of fraud are accompanied by election

boycotts, as in Cameroon in 1997 when the opposition boycotted in protest against the

president’s refusal to establish an independent electoral management body, or in Venezuela

in 2005 when the opposition voiced suspicions about newly-introduced voting machines.22 In

21 Beaulieu and Hyde, “In the Shadow of Democracy Promotion: Strategic Manipulation, International Observers, and Election Boycotts”; Beaulieu, Electoral Protest and Democracy in the Developing World; Schedler, The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism chp. 9; Hyde and Marinov, “Information and Self-Enforcing Democracy: The Role of International Election Observation.”22 Beaulieu, Electoral Protest and Democracy in the Developing World, 52–55.

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other contexts, protests accompany active electoral contestation by opposition candidates. A

good example of this pattern is Malaysia, where civil society groups have regularly

questioned the integrity of electoral institutions.23 In Belarus also, oppositions have routinely

challenged electoral procedures throughout the electoral cycle.24

Second, the opposition may accept electoral procedures in the run-up to the poll, but

then cry foul after the election takes place in order to put pressure on authorities to re-run part

or all of the race or to make other concessions. This was a common - and in some cases

successful - demand in the so-called ‘colored revolutions’ in Eastern Europe.25 In Mexico

under the Revolutionary Institutional Party post-electoral protests against fraud became an

institutionalized part of the repertoire of electoral activities.26 International concern that

accompanied the deadly post-electoral protests in Kenya in 2007/8 led to a series of major

electoral reforms designed to improve electoral conduct in subsequent contests.27 Such

mobilizational appeals are often especially successful among adherents of the losing party,

who have been found to be more critical of electoral integrity in the ‘loser’s consent’

literature.28

23 Chin and Wong, “Malaysia’s Electoral Upheaval.”24 Mochtak, “Terrorism and Political Violence Fighting and Voting: Mapping Electoral Violence in the Region of Post-Communist Europe Fighting and Voting: Mapping Electoral Violence in the Region of Post-Communist Europe.”25 Beissinger, “Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions”; Bunce and Wolchik, “Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes”; McFaul, “Ukraine Imports Democracy: External Influences on the Orange Revolution”; Tucker, “Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action Problems, and Post-Communist Colored Revolutions”; White, “Is There a Pattern?”26 Eisenstadt, “Mexico’s Postelectoral Concertacesiones: The Rise and Demise of a Substitutive Informal Institution.”27 Union, “EU Election Observation Mission to Kenya 2013 - European External Action Service”; Klaus and Mitchell, “Land Grievances and the Mobilization of Electoral Violence: Evidence from Côte d’ivoire and Kenya.”28 Anderson et al., Losers’ Consent: Elections and Democratic Legitimacy; Cantú and García-Ponce, “Partisan Losers’ Effects: Perceptions of Electoral Integrity in Mexico”; Uscinski and Parent, American Conspiracy Theories, 22, 91–92, 138–43.

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Third, the state’s greater access to the means of coercion make allegations of state

repression relatively credible in many contexts. State repression is a common complaint in

many contexts, even democratic ones, and it is typically plausible that at least some state

actors might have overstepped the mark in using the means of coercion at their disposal.

For all these reasons, we would expect opposition elites to have a strong incentive to

seek to tarnish the credibility of incumbent elites with allegations of fraud and violence.

Opposition parties have the most limited tools at their disposal; they can thus be expected to

use any manipulative strategy that could potentially be of benefit to them:

H1: Opposition actors will employ both allegations of misconduct and allegations of

violence.

The incumbent, for its part, is keen to limit the credibility of the opposition by linking

allegations of wrong-doing to opposition leaders. As already noted, opposition elites typically

have limited means of engaging in electoral misconduct. The most available tactic for those

without access to the levers of power is vote-buying, but this strategy may often be welcomed

or at least tolerated by large sections of the population, so criticism of this practice is likely to

be of limited use in undermining opposition credibility among the electorate. A more

promising approach is to seek to link known or suspected incidents of violence to opposition

elites in an effort to undermine their perceived commitment to democracy.

The opposition has greater incentives to employ violence as an electoral strategy than

the state, given the state’s ability to use subtle forms of electoral malpractice and yet to

maintain a veneer of democratic legitimacy; bereft of state resources, the opposition may

often see violence as one of the only viable tools at its disposal where the playing field is

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skewed to its disadvantage.29 This does not mean that the opposition will necessary employ

violent means, but it does lend plausibility to allegations of opposition-initiated violence.

Andrew Wilson describes how at the time of the 1999 presidential election in Ukraine,

associates of Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma framed Socialist opposition leader

Oleksandr Moroz with a staged attack on one of the other candidates.30 In Mali several

opposition leaders were accused of planning a coup d’état during the legislative elections of

1997.31 While opposition groups can also be expected to include violence allegations in the

charges they bring against incumbents, violence allegations should play a larger role in the

discursive strategies of the incumbent:

H2: Incumbents will use allegations of electoral violence more frequently than

allegations of misconduct.

While we do not in this analysis assess the causal efficacy of blame attributions in

altering perceptions of the legitimacy of actors, we have established compelling grounds for

believing that in the competitive authoritarian context, the actors we consider here will have

incentives to employ strategies of blame in an effort to discredit their opponents, but that the

strategies of actors will differ depending on the credibility of different claims: incumbents

have greater incentives to deploy allegations of violence, while oppositions are expected to

use a mixed strategy of alleging both misconduct and violence on the part of the incumbent.

2. The Turkish context

29 Collier and Vicente, “Violence, Bribery, and Fraud: The Political Economy of Elections in Sub-Saharan Africa”; Collier and Vicente, “Votes and Violence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria.”30 Wilson, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World, 183.31 Diawara, “Mali’s Struggle against Electoral Violence.”

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The empirical context in which we have chosen to test the above hypotheses is Turkey, a

country that has in recent years undergone considerable political change. Turkey has

experienced competitive elections since 1950. Although the number and impact of political

actors have varied since that time, competing parties have frequently employed strategies of

discursive delegitimization for political ends. Moreover, Turkey’s history of military rule and

the lingering influence of the military on Turkish politics through the latter part of the 20th

century means that the use of force is never far off the horizon of expectations of actors in

Turkish politics. This history also means that there is a clear distinction in Turkish political

culture between strategies that involve coercive force and those that entail other forms of

political manipulation. Thus, the analytic distinction detailed above between violence and

other forms of electoral misconduct is particularly apt in the Turkish context.

Turkey has since the 1970s been a hybrid state on the fuzzy border between

democracy and authoritarianism.32 It has regularly held competitive multiparty elections, yet

concerns have regularly been raised about electoral integrity, as well as about broader human

rights abuses in the country.33 Since the early 1990s, Turkey has been labeled ‘partly free’ by

Freedom House, and though elections in the country are competitive, they are not conducted

on an entirely level playing field. Figure 1 displays Turkey’s ‘electoral process’ rating over

the 2006-2017 period, based on Freedom House data. As can be seen from these data,

electoral integrity is moderately high by global standards, though it has witnessed a decline in

recent years as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tightened his grip on power and Turkey

can now be considered a competitive authoritarian state. At 8, Turkey’s electoral process

score at the end of the time series was very close to the global mean for this year of 7.69 and

32 Erişen and Kubicek. "Conceptualizing Democratic Consolidation in Turkey’.33 Öniş, "Monopolising the Centre”, Öniş, “Turkey’s Two Elections”, Öniş and Kutlay, "Global Shifts and the Limits of the EU’s Transformative Power in the European Periphery”, Őzbudun, “Problems of Rule of Law and Horizontal Accountability in Turkey: Defective Democracy or Competitive Authoritarianism?”

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on par with Guatemala, Malawi and Iraq. As this graph clearly shows, the 2014 and 2015

elections that are the empirical focus of the study mark the beginning of the recent objective

deterioration in electoral integrity, which makes these elections a suitable context in which to

test the hypotheses set out above, as this was a context in which allegations of electoral

malpractice began to carry more weight and to resonate more among those concerned with

the political direction taken by Turkey during this period.

Figure 1 about here

Although examples of delegitimization tactics can be found as far back as the 1950s,

these tactics have become more visible during the last two decades, an era marked by the

successive victories of Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (the Justice and Development Party,

AKP). During this period, the opposition parties launched an unprecedented number of

accusations of electoral fraud against the governing AKP, especially after 2010. These

allegations included the illegal use of overprinted ballot papers, misuse of state funds, media

censorship, the misuse of a computer-aided voter index system (SEÇSİS) and electricity cuts

during the vote count. Some noteworthy examples of these allegations are listed below:

When the Supreme Electoral Council (SEC) ordered the printing of an extra 17

million ballot papers for the 2015 June elections, the opposition parties raised

concerns about the use of these extra papers and the CHP raised the issue in the

Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA).34

The AKP has also regularly been accused of using the state funds to finance electoral

campaigns. When the Halkların Demokratik Partisi (People’s Democratic Party,

HDP) brought the issue to the attention of the SEC during the June 2015 elections,

their complaint was rejected.35

34 “Oy Pusulasi Neden Ihtiyacın 3 Kati Fazla Basıldı? [Why the Ballot Papers Printed 3 Times More than the Needed Amount?].”35 “YSK, HDP’nin Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan Ile Ilgili Başvurusunu Reddetti [SEC Rejected HDP’s Appeal about President Erdoğan].”

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The state broadcasting agency Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) decided not to air

a CHP campaign advert because it was perceived to be openly critical of the

governing AKP. The advert featured a cat walking near a transformer, referring to the

AKP’s Minister of Energy Taner Yıldız's explanation for the nationwide electricity

cuts during the 2014 local elections, which he had said occurred because a cat had

entered a transformer.36 The TRT was accused of pro-government bias and censorship

numerous times and taken to court by the CHP on several occasions.

The SEC the computer-aided electoral informatics system for collecting voter data

and election results, SEÇSİS, was designed to facilitate electoral procedures such as

registration, voting etc. However, SEÇSİS was criticized for its vulnerability to

external manipulation, and such concerns were brought to the Constitutional Court in

a case in which AKP politicians were accused of using SEÇSİS for electoral

advantage. The CHP raised the issue and the SEC, after eight months of investigation,

accepted that the SEÇSİS system does not have a security certificate, which means

that the results are open to undetected manipulation.37

The incumbent AKP, on the other hand, blamed the opposition parties for resorting to violent

tactics during election campaigns. On 23 April 2015, during an armed attack on the AKP

election centre in Batman, the son of a former AKP Member of Parliament was killed. AKP

officials blamed the opposition parties for the incident, although their guilt was never

proven.38 Likewise, when AKP parliamentary candidates were greeted with hostility by local

residents in Van – a heavily Kurdish-populated city – the AKP delegate accused the HDP of

organizing the incident.39 On 2 May 2015, AKP officials accused CHP supporters of

36 “Trafoya Kedi Girdi [A Cat Entered to the Transformer].”37 Başaran, “Devletin SEÇSİS Ile Ilgili Verdiği Cevaba Bak! [Check the ‘Answer’ of State on the Suspicions about SEÇSİS].”38 “AKP Seçim Lokaline Saldırı [Attack on the AKP Local].”39 “AKP Seçim Lokaline Saldırı [Attack on the AKP Local].”

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attacking their election van, which was canvassing in İstanbul.40 AKP district heads of

Kurdish-populated Van and Ağrı also accused the HDP of using force and coercion against

voters and village heads via the PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party).

Coupled with the above-mentioned episodes, there were several other violent

incidents reported in which parties of the opposition were involved. For example, on 18 April

2015, two people were taken into custody due to an armed assault aimed at the HDP

headquarters in Ankara. HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtaş claimed that 41 HDP election

offices had been subject to similar violent attacks.41 Similarly, on 30 April, an HDP election

stand in Uşak was attacked by a group; several people were injured during the fight while

electoral materials belonging to HDP were destroyed.42 Another example of an attack on the

HDP happened in Kırşehir on 14 May 2015, when a group of Turkish nationalists began

harassing HDP supporters who joined Selahattin Demirtaş in his visit to the city. Again,

several people were injured, and the police used water cannon to break up the crowd.43

On June 24, 2018, Turkish citizens went to the ballot box for the fourth time in five

years to vote in the first election to be held under the new presidential system which was

ratified by the 2017 constitutional referendum. Throughout the campaign period the tone of

the political parties and candidates was extremely confrontational. During party meetings

both sides blamed each other for being supporters of terrorism.44 During the campaign also

several violent incidents took place where the opposition parties and CHP, HDP, Felicity and

İYİ Party reported several attacks on their offices, vehicles and electoral materials coupled

with hindrances of meetings in multiple cities.45 The most controversial event of the elections 40 “CHP’liler AK Parti Seçim Karavanına Saldırdı[CHP Supporters Attacked the AKP Convoy].”41 “Demirtaş: Bugüne Kadar 41 HDP Seçim Bürosu Yakıldı [Demirtaş: 41 HDP Electoral Offices Had Been Burnt Down].”42 “Uşak’ta Tehlikeli Gerginlik [Dangerous Tension in Uşak].”43 “"HDP’nin Kırşehir Mitingine Saldırı [Attack on HDP’s Rally in Kırşehir].”44 OSCE, “International Election Observation Mission Republic of Turkey – Early Presidential and Parliamentary Elections – 24 June 2018,” 9.45 OSCE, 10.

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took place on the 14 June, when a violent shooting incident in south eastern village Suruc

between AKP campaigners and local shop-keepers, some of whom were HDP supporters, left

four people dead and eight injured.

Thus, though Turkey has a history of elections which have created legitimate governments

based on the popular will, recent developments have raised eyebrows about the integrity of

electoral processes. This makes the Turkish case a relevant context in which to probe the

research questions set out above.

3. Data and research design

The original dataset compiled for use in this study is designed to measure allegations of

electoral fraud and electoral violence in Turkey during the June 2015 parliamentary and 2014

local elections. The dataset is based on content analysis of newspaper reports for each

election, covering a period ranging from one month before to one month after each election.

We identified all documented allegations of electoral irregularities during each two-month

period, and coded each incident according to the actor making the accusation (if any) and the

actor that was the object of the accusation (if any). We carried out the content analysis on

national newspapers which are consistently listed as the most important sources of

information for Turkish citizens.46 The data were extracted from digital copies of the

newspapers according to the coding procedure described below. A broad range of newspapers

were chosen for this purpose; papers were selected to provide a comprehensive picture of

news coverage in Turkey and to ensure ideological diversity. These newspapers were coded

according to their ideological position as left, center and right; and their stance against

government as being pro-government, main stream and anti-government. The codebook

developed for this dataset followed content analyses conducted for similar studies on election

46 Toros, “The Kurdish Problem, Print Media, and Democratic Consolidation in Turkey.”

16

campaigns; the problem type variable was based on definitions used in Alihodžić47 for

varieties of electoral irregularity, including issues related to the campaing, the legal

framework, the planning and preparation of electoral activites, registration, the verification of

electoral results, training and information, voting operations and violence. These items

contain both overt and covert information on election-related problems. For example, news

related to the highest electoral authority in Turkey, Yüksek Seçim Kurulu (Higher Board of

Elections, YSK), may include detailed information on planning voting operations, receiving

and approval of the candidates, balloting operations, vote counting and the recording of votes.

News items such as this cover not only manifest information on the frequency and location of

incidents, but also important latent content on how the YSK approached these problems

which reveal its competence and potential shortcomings in the areas identified. Full details of

coding methodology and procedures, including examples, are provided in the Online

Appendix.

Prior to coding, coders each received 12 hours of training over a two-week period. In order to

ensure that training had been effective, we carried out reliability tests on the data coded

during the training sessions. Coded data were checked in two stages: In the first stage, the

coders analyzed materials (not included in the actual analysis) and applied the coding

procedure. The Krippendorff alpha value for the number of electoral problems identified was

0.58. After the coders discussed their findings, the same procedure was repeated; at this stage,

47 Alihodzic, The Guide on Factors of Election-Related Violence Internal to Electoral Processes.

17

the Krippendorff Alpha score was 0.67, which fulfils the threshold criteria for drawing

conclusions.48 The total number of news items coded was 2,174.

In coding newspaper stories, coders coded all news items on the front page of each

edition, as well as on the pages devoted to politics, domestic news, op-ed columns and

opinion pieces. Stories were included in the database if they contained reports of election

fraud or election violence. There was no minimum length for an item to be considered a news

story. If an item continued onto another page, the item and its continuation were coded as a

single story. If the news item contained more than one incident (i.e. it was coded under more

than one coding category) it was recorded as two different news items, with distinct

identification numbers.

4. Results

Before going into the results of the hypothesis tests, it is worthwhile presenting some

descriptive characteristics of the data which sketch the context for further analysis. Table 1

provides a breakdown of incidents coded according to incident and election types.

Table 1 about here

As Table 1 indicates, reports of violent electoral activities constitute 14 percent of the total

news corpus coded. The total rises to 18 percent for the 2015 Parliamentary elections and

falls to 11 percent for 2014 local elections. The other significant finding is the share of

“Planning and Preparation of Electoral Activities” category within the allegations of electoral

fraud and other forms of misconduct: nearly one third of the total corpus falls into this

category. Problems associated with the “Voting Operations” category are also noteworthy

with the share of nearly 19 percent.

48 De, “Calculating Inter-Coder Reliability in Media Content Analysis Using Krippendorff’s Alpha”; Krippendorff, “Reliability in Content Analysis: Some Common Misconceptions and Recommendations”; Krippendorff, “Reliability in Content Analysis.”

18

To test the hypotheses set out above, we created dependent variables representing

counts of fraud and violence allegations by collapsing the database by data collection day.

This procedure resulted in 119 observations. To test the relationship between party identity

and allegation type, we generated six dummy variables, each of which designates a dyadic

combination of accuser party and accused party, with allegations made by non-party actors as

the reference category. This is called a “who-did-what-to-whom” framework, where each

incident of electoral malpractice is understood as being characterized by a) a perpetrator, b) a

victim, and c) the type of malpractice.49 The coding process confirms that the vast majority of

party-initiated allegations take a dyadic form of this type. Our analysis thus compares

partisan allegations against a baseline of non-partisan news reporting. The party pairs were

entered into a Poisson regression model as independent variables, given that our dependent

variable is a count variable.50 These models provide estimates of the differential propensity of

each political party to accuse the other of the type of electoral malfeasance in question; the

coefficients can be understood as measuring the degree to which the party in question

emphasized these allegations over and above the emphasis they were accorded by non-

partisan journalists and other observers. In all models, the AKP is the governing party and the

CHP, MHP and HDP are opposition parties. Table 2 displays the regression models.

Table 2 & Figure 2 about here

The first model in Table 2 shows that with the exception of the MHP, all the political parties

made significantly more allegations of electoral fraud than did the baseline category of non-

party affiliated actors, allowing us to discount H0 that partisan actors’ accounts of electoral

misconduct and violence merely reflect objective practices. Interestingly, the governing AKP

did not shy away from accusing its opponents of fraud, despite the fact that it dominated the 49 Birch and Muchlinski, “The Dataset of Countries at Risk of Electoral Violence”; Birch, Elect. Malpract.50 Coxe, West, and Aiken, “The Analysis of Count Data: A Gentle Introduction to Poisson Regression and Its Alternatives”; Zeileis, Kleiber, and Jackman, “Regression Models for Count Data in R”; Cameron and Trivedi, “Essentials of Count Data Regression.”

19

electoral administrative machinery. According to the second model in this table, the dyads

involving the AKP and the MHP are not significant, suggesting that these parties were less

likely to accuse each other of violent acts. All the other dyads are significant, however. As

predicted by H2, the incumbent AKP was more likely than non-partisan actors to launch

allegations of violence against the CHP and especially the HDP. And as expected, the AKP

was in general more likely to use violence allegations than fraud allegations against the

opposition parties. This confirms our supposition that parties will leverage the plausibility of

wrong-doing to seek to discredit their opponents. Intriguingly, only one of the three

opposition parties (the CHP) was more likely to use fraud than violence allegations against

the governing AKP. We have also found supporting evidence for H1, which argues that

opposition parties should be expected to employ a mixed strategy of accusations of fraud and

violence together: with the exception of the MHP, all the opposition parties accused the AKP

of using both fraud and electoral violence. All in all, these results provide considerable

support for our expectation that political parties in the Turkish context should employ

discursive strategies of deligitimization in the electoral arena. In comparison to non-partisan

actors, political parties made far more allegations of both fraud and violence, with the

incumbent AKP demonstrating a preference for violence allegations and the opposition

parties employing mixed strategies.

With regard to party politics in Turkey, these findings can be interpreted in a number

of ways. When electoral wrong-doing is at issue, it seems that the AKP and the MHP prefer

strategies of attacking the CHP and the HDP, rather than attacking each other. This choice

can be understood as an electoral tactic which stems from the parties’ similar voter bases: the

coalition between these parties during the 2017 referendum provides further support for this

argument. The above findings also highlight the high number of electoral violence

accusations between the AKP and HDP. This is also in line with the general political climate

20

and discourse in Turkey where the AKP tends to blame the HDP for allying with the PKK,

and the HDP accuses the AKP of resorting to military means of solving the Kurdish

‘problem’ in Turkey. It seems that this discursive structure affects electoral practices as well.

The use of allegations of impropriety as an electoral tactic may have diverse effects

on democratic functioning in Turkey. First, tactics which repeatedly underline a restrictive

and uneven playing field for politics have the potential to consolidate existing doubts about

the quality of democracy in Turkey. Second, the mixed strategy of accusations of fraud and

violence by opposition parties may be signals of increasing authoritarian tendencies. Finally,

such allegations will also contribute to the deepening social and political polarization in the

country.51

5. Discussion

The Turkish party system has for a number of years been characterized by high levels of

polarization and mistrust, which fuel intolerance of political outgroups.52 As we have seen,

allegations of electoral wrong-doing are commonly used as a strategy to delegitimize political

opponents. Turkey is characteristic of many competitive authoritarian states in that debates

about legality are a common focus of political discourse.53 In Andreas Schedler’s terms, there

are constant meta-games at play.54 Political competition is about the rules of the game

themselves, not just about policy. Turkey thus is beginning to exhibit some of the classic

51 Akkoyunlu, “Electoral Integrity in Turkey: From Tutelary Democracy to Competitive Authoritarianism.”52 Yardımcı-Geyikçi, “Party Institutionalization and Democratic Consolidation: Turkey and Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective,” Erişen, “Tolerance and Democratization in Turkey.”53 Öniş, "Monopolising the Centre”, Ziya Öniş and Mustafa Kutlay. "Global Shifts and the Limits of the EU’s Transformative Power in the European Periphery”, Őzbudun, “Problems of Rule of Law and Horizontal Accountability in Turkey: Defective Democracy or Competitive Authoritarianism?”54 Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation.”

21

features of competitive authoritarianism, making it an excellent case in which to probe the

hypotheses about discursive strategies set out above.

Our findings demonstrate that allegations of both electoral fraud and violence are used

more by partisan than by non-partisan actors in Turkey, supporting the view that such

accusations are electoral tactics. In as much as these tactics exaggerate and distort actual

events, as is strongly suggestion by the deviation between partisan and non-partisan reports,

we can identify this strategy as one of meta-manipulation. The governing AKP party appears

particularly partial to using violence allegations against the opposition, while the opposition

parties for the most part use mixed strategies, accusing the government of both violence and

fraud.

Allegations of impropriety can potentially be highly destabilizing in an election

campaign, sparking protests or even violent reactions following elections.55 The partisan slant

to accusations that we have uncovered here is thus concerning. It may of course be that the

opposition really was responsible for many violent events during the 2014 and 2015

elections, and that all parties did in fact commit numerous acts of electoral misconduct, such

that the allegations reported here reflect real events. Yet the objective data we have on

elections in Turkey suggest otherwise; despite flaws, Turkish elections remain largely

immune from the widespread gross irregularities suggested by the data on allegations that we

have collected. According to the detailed Electoral Integrity Project annual reports, Turkish

elections in 2014 and 2015 suffered from defects mainly in the areas of electoral legislation,

the media environment and campaign finance, all of which compromise the level playing

field that is expected to subtend democratic elections.56 In this sense Turkish elections cannot

be said to be entirely fair, but there is little evidence to suggest that they were beset by the

widespread fraud and violence suggested by the strident discourse that swirled around the 55 Hafner-Burton, Hyde, and Jablonski, “When Do Governments Resort to Election Violence?”56 Norris, Martinez i Coma, and Gromping, “The Year in Elections, 2014.”

22

polls. Accusations of electoral wrong-doing contributed to the climate of fear and distrust that

has been a feature of recent Turkish politics; and this climate represents a threat to the free

exchange of ideas characteristic of democracy.57 Thus even if they are unfounded, allegations

of impropriety can have very real impacts on democratic life.

This analysis confirms our conjecture that allegations of electoral impropriety are

employed strategically as an electoral tool to manipulate perceptions of the electoral process.

If this is true, then accusations of fraud and violence can be added to the ‘menu of

manipulation’58 that has in recent years been employed to assess elections. Preliminary

consideration of other states on the fuzzy border between democracy and non-democracy

support the view that the analytic tool of meta-manipulation might well be useful in other

contexts. In the Jamaican general election of 1967, for example, the two main political parties

went so far as to integrate allegations of violence by their rivals into their campaign posters,

which both included armored vehicles in allusion to the supposed threat posed by the other

side.59 Another example of this phenomenon is the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, which has

for years witnessed ethnic tensions and high levels of mutual suspicion between groups.

Questionable allegations of misconduct at the time of the 2015 elections led to a decision by

the Zanzibar Election Commission to annul the results and re-hold the polls, a decision which

sparked violence and an opposition boycott.60 (EU 2015). On the face of it, the Jamaican and

Tanzanian examples are very different, but when the meta-manipulative tool of impropriety

allegations is invoked as an organizing principle, the parallels between them come into relief.

6. Conclusion

57 Öniş, “Turkey’s Two Elections”.58 Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation.”59 Sives, Elections, Violence and the Democratic Process in Jamaica, p. 73.60 European Union, “Election Observation Mission: Republic of Tanzania.”

23

Suspicion often runs high in competitive authoritarian contexts; this means that where

electoral actors can successfully sow the seeds of doubt about their opponents’ legitimacy in

the eyes of the population, the political payoff can be large.61 The analysis of accusations of

electoral impropriety in Turkey supports this claim. It would be of benefit in future research

to examine whether the same pattern is found in other competitive authoritarian states. If this

does appear to be a common occurrence in the competitive authoritarian world, then this

analysis will have uncovered a previously neglected form of electoral manipulation – the

discursive manipulation of electoral integrity discourse.

What this paper does not explore is whether the allegations analyzed here had any

effect on voter beliefs or behavior. Another interesting extension to our research would

therefore be to assess the impact of allegations of fraud or violence on voting behavior and

voting outcomes, both in Turkey and elsewhere. It would also be instructive to assess the

extent to which the Turkish public believed the allegations they read about in the print media.

Finally, the generation of analogous data for elections other than those of 2014 and 2015 will

make a range of further comprehensive analyses possible. It will, for example, be of interest

to track patterns in the strategic use of malpractice allegations over time in order to pinpoint

the context in which each party adopted this strategy, and the context in which they decided

to employ other strategies instead. The strategic manipulation of beliefs about electoral

conduct is an understudied topic, and much work remains to be done in this sphere.

61 Beaulieu, Electoral Protest and Democracy in the Developing World; Norris, Martinez i Coma, and Gromping, “The Year in Elections, 2014.”

24

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Online Appendix

Variables

Content Element

ShortDefinition

Manifest or Latent

Measurement Level

MeasurementCategories

Newspaper Name of the newspaper which covers the news

Manifest Nominal Akit, Taraf, Birgün, Zaman, Posta, Yeniçağ, Sabah, Hurriyet, Cumhuriyet, Sözcü

Election Election type Manifest Nominal Local, ParliamentaryDate Date of the news Manifest Interval Recorded as the date of the incidentDate Code Code between -

31 to +31Manifest Interval Code of the incident date: minus levels

before the election day, plus levels after the election day

Heading Heading of the news piece

Manifest Text Heading of the news piece

Type Type of the material that the coded information is in

Manifest Nominal News, Columns

Problem Type

Types of electoral irregularities

Latent Nominal Legal Framework, Planning and Execution of Electoral Activities, Education and Training, Registration, Campaigns, Voting Day Problems, Registration of Electoral Results, Violence, Other problems

Accuser identity

Party id of the accuser

Manifest Nominal AKP, CHP, MHP, HDP, Others

Accused identity

Party id of the accused

Manifest Nominal AKP, CHP, MHP, HDP, Others

Coding example 1

CHP Ankara Metropolitan city candidate Mansur Yavaş: We have established a team of 40 observers who only traces the multiple registrations. Currently we have identified 58 thousand multiple voter registrations. For example, the same national id was registered both in Sincan and Çankaya.

(CHP Büyükşehir Belediye Başkan Adayı Mansur Yavaş: Sandık müşahitlerinden oluşan 40 kişilik bir ekip sadece mükerrer kayıtların takibini yapıyor. Şu anda tespit ettiğimiz 58 bin mükerrer kayıt var. Aynı kimlik numarası örneğin hem Sincan’da var hem de Çankaya’da.)

Content Element Measurement CategoriesNewspaper SözcüElection LocalDate 5 March 2014Date Code -25Heading Sandıkta hile korkusu [The Fear of Electoral Rigging]Type ColumnsProblem Type Planning and Execution of Electoral Activities, Sender of the Message CHPAddressee of the Message

None

Coding example 2

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HDP Leader Demirtaş said that the assaults on the HDP buildings are quite serious events and added: “we have retained our conventional wisdom [against these incidents]. A decision of confidentiality was issued on this investigation [by the court]. Why does one hide this investigation? … all of the happened events point the AKP, not the HDP.

(Adana ve Mersin'de HDP İl Başkanlığı binalarına yönelik saldırıların çok vahim olaylar olduğunu kaydeden Demirtaş, "Biz sağduyumuzu koruduk. Dosya ile ilgili gizlilik kararı verildi. Bu soruşturma niye gizlensin ki? … olup biten her şey AKP'yi işaret ediyor, HDP'yi işaret etmiyor.)

Content Element Measurement CategoriesNewspaper BirgünElection ParliamentaryDate 22 May 2015Date Code -15Heading Demirtaş, Davutoğlu'nu yalanladı: Saldırıyı yapan DHKP-C'li değil

[Demirtaş refutes Davutoğlu: Perpetrator is not a member of DHKP-C]Type NewsProblem Type Violence Sender of the Message HDPAddressee of the Message

AKP

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