Kemal Özkiraz from Eurasia Public Research Center (AKAM) said: “The most unstamped ballots were in the South East, with a mostly Kurdish population.”

Özkiraz spoke to the website Gazete Duvar and said: “In a country with 1 million voided and 2,5 million unstamped votes, what good is it to do surveys when we can’t be sure if our estimates were correct or whether we were wrong?”

Özkiraz said the following on the Supreme Election Board’s (YSK) decision to accept unstamped envelopes and ballots: “The information I got from parties and ballot observers is that the unstamped ballots were all ‘Yes’ votes. This cannot be explained with ‘coincidence’. The YSK needs to announce right away how many unstamped ballots were accepted. If this number was inconsequential to the referendum, they would have already announced it and nobody would continue their objection. It is obvious that these ballots affected the outcome. Some sources talk of 2 to 2.5 million votes. With the participation percentage, that comes to around 6%. If there really are so many unstamped ballots when 900 thousand votes were considered invalid, then there definitely is fraud there. I don’t know how right it would be to comment on a fraudulent vote.”

Özkiraz said the information they gathered pointed to most of the unstamped ballots being in Kurdish cities and added: “The YSK must make a statement on this.”

Kemal Özkiraz said: “The allegations that have emerged and some videos should have pushed the opposition to immediately demand the voting be stopped.”