Voter Education According to international standards, states are responsible for ensuring that information about elections is prepared to enable illiterate voters or those with a different mother tongue to effectively exercise their right to vote. UN Human Rights Committee General Comment 25, Paragraph 12 “… Positive measures should be taken to overcome specific difficulties, such as illiteracy, language barriers, poverty, or impediments to freedom of movement which prevent persons entitled to vote from exercising their rights effectively. Information and materials about voting should be available in minority languages. Specific methods, such as photographs and symbols, should be adopted to ensure that illiterate voters have adequate information on which to base their choice…” Prior to the June 7th elections, two women voters applied to AMER, which is a member of the Platform, and asked for the voter education TV spots of the SBE to be broadcasted in Kurdish since they did not speak, read or write in Turkish. Legal support was provided to the applicants to enable them to apply to the SBE requesting a board decision allowing voter education in other languages. However, the SBE rejected both applications without adopting a board decision, with an official written decision by the President of the SBE. The reasoning of the decision sent to the applicants states ‘’If this is done in Kurdish, it would also have to be done in other languages’’. The applicants applied the SBE a second time through their lawyers and claimed that the rejection of their request without being discussed in the board was unlawful and stated that a board decision should be adopted on the matter. Upon the second application, the SBE stated that they do not give voter education in other languages but that the voting process would be explained to non-Turkish speakers and illiterate voters at the ballot box by means of an interpreter. This decision is important not only for voters who are non-Turkish speakers with a different mother tongue, but also for illiterate voters with hearing impairments.10 However, the SBE did not inform the chairpersons of the ballot box committees of this positive decision and has not published it on its web site. The following is a note by an observer regarding the issue: “Z.D. arrived at the Ballot box No: 1016 at the Hürriyet Bekir primary school with a photocopy of the SBE decision No: 1040 and asked for a Kurdish interpreter because she did not know Turkish. However, the Chairperson of the Ballot box Committee stated that the document was not valid because it lacked a wet signature. After the lawyer and building official examined the decision, it was decided that the ballot boxchairpersonwouldprovide interpretation inKurdish for Z.D.” The women voters who had made an application to the SBE went to their ballot boxes with the decision that had been sent to them by the SBE and stated that they wished to be informed in their mother tongue about the voting process. The chairpersons of the respective ballot boxes stated that they were not informed of such an SBE decision. AMER has applied to the Ombudsman and the National Human Rights Institute of Turkey requesting for decisions attesting to the fact that the failure of the SBE to have prepared public information spots in other languages is a human rights violation. 10 Although the SBE decision stated that voter education did not take place, there are public spots on the SBE web sites regarding the registration of domestic and overseas voters as well as on how to cast their votes. Link https://media.ysk.gov.tr/MV2015-YiciSecmen.mp4 https://media.ysk.gov.tr/MV2015-YdisiSecmen.mp4 11