State-Run AA Declares CHP Ahead in İstanbul Elections After 13-Hour Silence

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One of the closest races in yesterday's (March 31) local elections was for İstanbul, the largest city of Turkey.

When the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate began to catch the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) candidate Binali Yıldırım, the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA) stopped updating the election results.

As of 11.21 p.m. last night, with more than 98 percent of the polls were opened, the difference between the candidates was less than 0.3 percent when the updates stopped.

Uproar on social media

After the silence of the AA and the TVs which subscribed to it to broadcast elections got longer and longer, social media users began to react. Many people lashed out at the AA, tweeting under the hashtag #AnadoluAjansıVeriGir (Anadolu Agency, enter data).

After the reactions, AA made a statement in the morning, saying that "the flow of data from the field has stopped" and "they will begin to update when data reaches them."

Yet it did not give further results on the İstanbul elections.

"Greetings to my townspeople in İstanbul - Ekrem İmamoğlu, Mayor of the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality" (Drawing: Gianluca Costantini)

"Data flow stopped"

After more than 13 hours of silence, AA made İstanbul red, the color of the CHP, in its interactive election map. The agency also released a statement.

"The Anadolu Agency began its duty of delivering the figures after the polls closed and the data flow continued in the following hours at night. Data flow was paused after a healthy data flow could not be obtained from some polls. Because any data regarding the remaining one percent of the votes did not reach us, it was decided to wait for the results from the Supreme Election Council (YSK)."

YSK Chair: "AA is not my client"

YSK Chair Sadi Güven also made a statement today. On the AA stopping updates, he said, "I am not providing any information service to the Anadolu Agency, the AA is not receiving data from me. When the AA reached 90 percents, I had just begun to enter data."

So, how does the data reach AA? There are two ways: First, obtaining the information on records from district election councils, which YSK Chair Güven said AA does not do; and second, obtaining wet-signed records from parties. This can be done by obtaining information from parties' city and district organizations through local reporters or obtaining information from the headquarters of the parties.

This question remains after AA's statement: Where did the data come to AA, why did it stop? (HK/VK)