Having defeated his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the second round of the presidential elections, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was re-elected as president. The outgoing president was reappointed with about 52 percent of the vote. The turnout was 85%. A total of more than 64 million Turks, including those residing abroad, had the right to vote: all Turkish citizens aged 18 and over could vote. In the first round on May 14, when the turnout exceeded 87 percent, Erdoğan won the first place with 49.5 percent, and Kılıçdaroğlu received close to 45 percent. Sinan Ogan, a right-wing nationalist politician who later decided to support the outgoing president in the runoff, came in third with just over 5% of the vote.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife Emine voted in the district of Üsküdar on the Anatolian side of Istanbul in the morning. In an interview with the state television TRT after the vote, he said that today’s election operations are important “for the life of democracy”, since it is the first presidential election in Turkey that was held in the second round.
In Ankara, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the candidate of the opposition parties who challenged Erdoğan until the second round, voted. On the eve of the election, he had called on all citizens to go to the polls “to save us from an authoritarian regime and to bring freedom and democracy”.
Was the vote in Syria decisive?
According to Turkish analyst Fatih Altaylii, “Given the margin, the Syrians have decided who will rule Turkey.” The analyst believes that the approximately 1.5 million Syrians granted Turkish citizenship are decisive, as he wrote in his Twitter profile. Commenting on a video the day before the vote Fox News, He underlined that “If Erdogan wins the elections, he will win with the votes of the refugees who have been granted citizenship.”
After winning and obtaining his third presidential term, Erdogan will therefore remain in power for another 5 years.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
