Turkey’s main opposition bloc plans to deploy around 500,000 observers for the May 14 election amid concerns about voter fraud, the coalition’s ruling Republican People’s Party (CHP) announced today.

“We are mobilizing up to half a million people in 50,000 polling stations and we will have 192,000 polling stations across Turkey,” Oguz Kaan Salici, deputy leader of the main opposition party (CHP), told reporters in Istanbul, adding that the observers included lawyers and volunteers.

There are “serious concerns” about election security, including possible technical problems during voting or vote counting on Election Day, said Salici, who oversees election security efforts for the six-party National Alliance.

In previous elections, including the 2019 local elections, the state-run Anadolu news agency has been accused of falsifying data.

The alliance is to share its own data from the polls separately, Salici added.

Despite concerns of fraud, the opposition is confident of prevailing over the president’s People’s Alliance Recep Tayyip Erdogan and will thus give the international community “an example of removing an authoritarian and populist leader with a democratic vote”, he said.

Foreign observers have raised serious concerns about whether the process will be fair amid the lack of a free press and restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly.

The media in Turkey is overwhelmingly under the direct or indirect control of Erdogan.

On May 14, the nearly 64 million Turkish citizens with the right to vote will decide on the country’s new president as well as the new composition of the parliament.

Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu is the rival of Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades.

Recent polls show a head-to-head battle between the two.