2023-05-15 03:45:00
Both incumbent Erdoğan and challenger Kılıçdaroğlu remain below 50 percent. A defeat for both candidates. Challenger Kılıçdaroğlu had also hoped for a win in the first round. The government and opposition accuse each other of sabotage.
The political future of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be decided in a runoff election on May 28th. After Sunday’s election, Erdoğan was ahead of opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, but below the 50 percent mark he would have needed to win in the first round. Erdoğan’s coalition government suffered losses in the parliamentary elections held at the same time, but was able to maintain its majority in parliament.
Erdoğan was 49.34 percent after counting 98 percent of the votes at the state news agency Anadolu in the morning. Kılıçdaroğlu came to 45 percent. According to the private news agency Anka, Erdoğan also got 49 percent, while Kilıçdaroğlu got 45 percent. According to Anka and Anadolu, the third candidate in the race for the presidency, the right-wing nationalist Sinan Oğan, could count on five percent of the vote. In the last election in 2018, Erdoğan won with 52.6 percent in the first ballot.
AKP alliance narrowly misses a majority in parliament
According to Anadolu, the government alliance led by Erdoğan’s AKP party just missed the majority in the parliamentary elections with 49.3 percent of the votes. The alliance around Kilicdaroglu only gets 35.1 percent of the votes. Even with the support of the alliance around the pro-Kurdish HDP (10.5 percent), they would not have an absolute majority. The AKP would have lost around six percentage points compared to 2018.
Erdoğan and the AKP lost votes in Istanbul and Ankara, as well as in southern provinces such as Antalya, the Kurdish south-east and the north-east. Erdogan saw himself “by far ahead” in the presidential election. However, it will still take some time before the preliminary results are published, he said on Monday night in front of cheering supporters in Ankara. “Everyone has to respect the will of the people,” he said.
But if the preliminary results were to be confirmed, the opposition would still have missed their most important goals. Kılıçdaroğlu had hoped for a first-round win. He appeared in front of the press that night together with the party leaders of his six-party electoral alliance. “Despite his defamation and insults, Erdogan did not achieve the result he expected,” he said. The opposition will win and bring democracy to the country.
Dispute about counting modalities
The opposition accused the Anadolu Agency and Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party of withholding voting results to make Kılıçdaroğlu’s share of the vote appear lower. The results were published late, especially in the big cities, where the opposition was particularly strong. The AKP rejected the allegation of irregularities.
AKP spokesman Ömer Celik accused the CHP of sabotage. The mayor of Istanbul, CHP politician Ekrem İmamoğlu, on the other hand, accused government agencies of disseminating false preliminary figures that glossed over the values of official Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Both sides had each claimed to see themselves ahead of the votes.
Kılıçdaroğlu called on his supporters to remain at the ballot box until the end of the count. “Never leave the polls and the election commissions,” he said on Monday night in Ankara. “We’ll stay here until every vote is counted.”
Tough election campaign awaits
Turkey faces a tough election campaign in the two weeks leading up to the run-off election. Erdoğan had accused Kılıçdaroğlu and the opposition of collaborating with the Kurdish terrorist organization PKK in the last few days before Sunday’s election. The opposition accuses the president and government of failure in economic policy, the repression of dissidents and corruption.
In 2017, Erdoğan implemented a presidential system that gave him great powers. Kılıçdaroğlu wants to abolish this system and return to parliamentary democracy. When the Erdoğan era came to an end, things would also change in economic and foreign policy. Kılıçdaroğlu has announced that he will strengthen fundamental rights and improve Turkey’s relations with the West, which have been in a permanent crisis for years.
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