Tens of thousands of Berlin Turks can starting this Thursday take part in the parliamentary and presidential elections in Turkey. Turkey’s elections are due on May 14, but Turks living abroad must cast their votes before then: from April 27th to May 9th. A tight outcome is expected in the elections. According to polls, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has a good chance of defeating Recep Tayyip Erdogan after 20 years in power.
According to official statistics, 186,000 Turks and people of Turkish origin live in Berlin. Around 101,000 of them have Turkish citizenship, and more than 95,000 of them are adults. In all of Germany there are around 1.5 million Turks with the appropriate passport.
However, in order to cast their votes, Turks have to be entered in the electoral rolls in good time. How many did this in Berlin was not officially announced. A request to the Turkish embassy remained unanswered. In the 2018 election, around half of the Turks who were eligible to vote in Berlin put their names on the lists. So there were 50,000 potential voters. The turnout was then again around 50 percent, so that there were around 25,000 Turkish voters in Berlin.
A total of 60.7 million people are called to vote in Turkey, and an additional 3.4 million people abroad can cast their votes. In Germany, the ballot boxes are located in the Turkish Consulates General of large cities, including also in Berlin in the Heerstraße in Charlottenburg. In June 2018, 65 percent of Turks living in Germany voted for Erdogan and his party in the presidential election. In Turkey it reached only 53 percent. (dpa)
