Unlike the presidential and parliamentary elections held in June 2018, the 2019 local elections were not conducted under the state of emergency first declared after the July 2016 failed coup attempt and which had ceased after the elections in 2018. That said, as the Congress noted in its election observation report, “mass arrests and prosecution of more than 100,000 persons, including many journalists among others, and dismissals of more than 150,000 civil servants by emergency decrees were still resonating in the society, affecting especially the judiciary where about one third of civil servants had been dismissed. Last but not least, many of the measures adopted during the state of emergency had, in the meantime, been made regular laws and thus relevant provisions became applicable also in the 2019 local elections.”