Two lawmakers from Germany and Sweden said Thursday that Turkey had blocked them as international OSCE observers of key weekend elections. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) go into parliamentary and presidential polls Sunday which could lead to radical changes in how the country is run.
German MP Andrej Hunko of the far-left Die Linke Party said he was scheduled to help monitor the elections for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), as he had in years past. But he said he was told on Thursday by Turkey's OSCE representative that he could not go, forcing him to get off a Turkey-bound flight from Vienna at the last moment.
Swedish Greens Party MP Jabar Amin said Thursday he was being held at Istanbul airport, where officials were planning to put him on a flight back to Stockholm. "When I arrived at passport control, the security services were waiting for me, they took my passport and took me to another place," he told Swedish news agency TT.
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