Following the general elections recently held in Kazakhstan, Dr. Akkan Suver, President of the Marmara Group Strategic and Social Research Foundation has made a declaration on behalf of the International observers   Following the general elections recently held in Kazakhstan, Dr. Akkan Suver, President of the Marmara Group Strategic and Social Research Foundation has made a declaration on behalf of the International observers: The elections in Kazakhstan were realized according to the Western norms. Following the general elections held in Kazakhstan, the Turkish election observer Dr. Akkan Suver who made a declaration on behalf of the international observers stated that the elections took place in a democratic environment and was realized according to the Western norms. The summary of Dr. Akkan Suver’s relevant election report is as follows: “The Kazakhstan general elections that took place on Saturday, 18 August 2007, were held in a democratic environment. No irregularities were encountered during the election process where 70 percent of the voters participated. We have observed that the vote took place in a generally calm and harmonious atmosphere where some of the votes were delivered by means of electronic post and others by the voters’ manually marking the ballot papers. International observers who monitored various ballot centers have not registered any irregularities or received significant number of complaints from the representatives of the participating political parties whom they have met. In the elections where transparent ballot boxes were used, the Nur Otan party of President Nur Sultan Nazarbayev received 88 percent of the votes. Since none of the other political parties could receive more than 7 percent of the votes, which was the minimum requirement for qualification, they could not gain any of the parliamentary seats. Consequently, Nur Otan party was the only winner for the 98 parliamentary seats”.21 August, 2007