Ankara The outcome of the election in Turkey is uncertain even hours after the polling stations have closed. Conflicting information about the first counts in the parliamentary and presidential elections is causing confusion – and criticism of the Turkish state media.
Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has 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.”
It currently looks as if none of the candidates for the presidency can get more than 50 percent of the votes in this first ballot. This makes a runoff election on May 28 more and more likely.
The Supreme Electoral Authority YSK opened and evaluated almost 82 percent of the ballot boxes submitted at 00:56 a.m. (local time) on Wednesday morning. Accordingly, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan achieved 49.98 percent of the votes, opposition leader Kilicdaroglu 44.27 percent. A third candidate comes to 5.31 percent. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes in the first ballot, the two strongest candidates will compete again on May 28.
Objection to counting
The state news agency Anadolu had attested Erdogan a larger lead for several hours after the polling stations closed at 5:00 p.m. (local time). The opposition accused the news agency of manipulating the results. She said opposition leader Kilicdaroglu was just ahead of Erdogan.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu – a supporter of Kilicdaroglu – said election observers from the ruling Islamic conservative party AKP regularly object to the results of polling stations where Kilicdaroglu is in the lead.
Faik Öztrak, a spokesman for Kilicdaroglu’s social democratic party CHP, sees the situation for the opposition as “extremely positive”. “We’re ahead,” tweeted Kilicdaroglu, who ran as a candidate for a six-party coalition. His party called on the Turkish population not to heed the election results of the state news agency Anadolu.
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If Erdogan should ultimately only fall slightly below 50 percent on this election night, he can still hope for a boost from the votes of around 1.6 million Turks abroad. Their vote has not yet been counted.
In the end, the votes could lift Erdogan back over the 50 percent mark – and confirm him in the presidency. The decisive factor here is the Supreme Electoral Authority YSK, which may not announce the official result until Tuesday.
It is clear that the opposition initially failed in its attempt to defeat Erdogan in the first ballot. Things are also not looking good for the opposition alliance in the parallel parliamentary elections: the alliance of Erdogan’s AKP is likely to win an absolute majority in the National Assembly. This election will be decided in the first ballot.
After counting 88 percent of the votes, the state news agency Anadolu saw the alliance around Erdogan’s AKP at over 50 percent, the CHP from the opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu came to around 35 percent of the votes and the pro-Kurdish HDP to almost ten percent. The 600-seat parliament has had limited power since the introduction of a controversial presidential system under Erdogan.
Should there be a runoff election for the presidential candidate, as now expected, Erdogan would have a double advantage. On the one hand, he can claim that he himself led in the first ballot. On the other hand, he can argue that the president and parliamentary majority should belong to the same party.
After voting, the ballot papers are thrown into transparent boxes.
(Photo: IMAGO/SNA)
Around 64 million people in Germany and abroad who were eligible to vote were invited to vote. In Germany, around 1.5 million people with a Turkish passport were entitled to vote. Around 192,000 ballot boxes were set up in Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of government and opposition observers are deployed, including several German members of the Bundestag. There were no reports of protests on Sunday evening.
Erdogan will run for another five-year term as president. In some polls, the 69-year-old Erdogan, who is increasingly authoritarian, was behind his biggest challenger. 74-year-old Kilicdaroglu of the centre-left CHP party is the joint candidate of an opposition alliance.
The elections are attracting international attention because they show whether a united opposition can oust Erdogan from office. Almost all of the power of the state was concentrated in him.
In the midst of the Turkish elections, one of the most famous and largest daily newspapers has become the target of a cyber attack. The website of the high-circulation newspaper “Sözcü”, which is attributed to the opposition camp, was unavailable on Sunday evening.
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