Hurriyet - The head of the Eurasia Opinion Research Center (AKAM), Kemal Özkiraz, has
announced that he will close his survey company following its failure to
accurately predict the April 16 constitutional referendum results.
Before
the vote, Özkiraz had said he would close the company if the "yes” side won,
adding that his surveys indicated the "no” side would win 53 percent of the
vote.
"We as AKAM had promised that we would close our company if the
referendum results showed ‘no,’” he said on his official Twitter
account.
"Somebody told me that ‘You know the real result. They cheated.
The converted 2.5 million invalid vote to ‘yes.’’ I knew [the results] but there
is no logic in making a survey if they are able to convert 2.5 million votes. If
the results are true and if we failed to predict it, there is no sense in doing
polls either,” he stated.
"If the official results of the YSK
[Supreme Election Board] show that the ‘yes’ votes won, AKAM will be closed. I
wrote that I believed … the poll surveys. I gave up my career and my company
which I founded with my own efforts. The responsibility is mine. God speed
Turkey!”
He also stated that they would pay out the salaries to the
company’s pollsters.
"We spent a lot of money but it was our own. We did
not deliberately mislead anybody,” he said.
At the same time, Özkiraz
noted that he believed the vote was suspicious. "I don’t think the results are
particularly correct. I’m 100 percent sure that the results are tainted.”