More than 53.7 million Turkish voters head to the polls on June 7 for a crucial parliamentary election. report hurriyetdailynews

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has framed the June 7 election in Turkey as a key hurdle on the path to the powerful presidential system that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to introduce.

However, if the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) crosses the 10 percent election threshold, the number of AKP lawmakers will decrease considerably, making it almost impossible to reach the 330 seats necessary for a constitutional change.

The HDP has faced scores of physical attacks during its campaign. One of its campaign bus drivers, Hamdullah Öğe, was murdered on June 3, and three of its supporters were killed when twin bomb blasts hit its milestone rally in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on June 5.

Election safety has also been a hot item on the agenda during the campaign ahead of the vote, amid the opposition’s claims that there was fraud in the vote counting process. The government has strictly denied the claim and mobilized a total of 404,000 security personnel to maintain security throughout the day of the election.

Here are the live updates:

6:30 p.m. – 22.2 percent of the votes have been counted so far.

6:20 p.m. – 16 percent of the votes have been counted so far, but the official publication ban on the initial results is continuing.

6:10 p.m. – 10.6 percent of the votes have been counted so far.

6.00 p.m. – According to a consolidated vote tally from Anadolu and Cihan news agencies, 6.6 percent of the votes have been counted so far, but the official publication ban on the initial results is continuing.

5.50 p.m. – During the counting of votes coming from abroad, a group claimed that some ballots were illegally thrown into the garbage at the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, according to private broadcaster CNN Türk. Police have arrived to stop a resulting fist-fight between party officials. “There is no problem at the place where votes from abroad are being counted. Our friends are on duty there. No need to panic,” HDP co-chair Demirtaş has said.

5.45 p.m. – 0.9 percent of the votes have been counted so far, but the official publication ban on the initial results is continuing.

5:00 p.m. – Polls close across Turkey and vote-counting starts at 174,240 ballot boxes.

Click for real-time results shown on a map
4.55 p.m. – A headman in Batman’s Yolveren village was all by lonesome on June 7, as he was the only person to cast a vote at his polling booth because the locality’s other 16 registered voters all now live in Germany. (Click here to read more)

4:50 p.m. – Residents of the Kuşu village in Turkey’s western province of Kütahya have boycotted the elections for a third time since 2011, when the town’s status was reduced to “village” due to a population decrease. (Click here to read more)

4:42 p.m. – Istanbul Gov. Vasip Şahin has confirmed the cars without license plates cannot belong to the police, according to CHP Istanbul provincial head Murat Karayalçın, who spoke with Şahin on the phone.

4:10 p.m. – A Turkish voter in the Aegean province of Manisa stamped himself in the forehead rather than the ballot paper to protest the elections, in which he said he had no faith. (Click here to read more)