Tens of millions of Turkish voters went to the polls on Sunday to cast their votes in the presidential and parliamentary elections.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his main rival, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, will go head-to-head in a runoff election, after Erdoğan outperformed expectations but failed to reach the 50% threshold to win the presidential race outright.
The president scored 49.51% against Kılıçdaroğlu’s 44.88%, with a small number of overseas votes left to count. The head of the Supreme Electoral Board said that even when the remaining 35,874 uncounted overseas votes were distributed, no one would secure the majority needed to win the elections outright.
The runoff will take place on 28 May. A nationalist third candidate, Sinan Oğan, emerged as a potential kingmaker after picking up 5.17% of the vote.
Both candidates will need the support of Oğan in order to cross the 50% threshold. Official turnout reached a record 88.9%.
Erdoğan’s right-wing party retained control of parliament through an alliance with ultra-nationalists.
The lira touched new lows against the dollar, and stocks on the Istanbul exchange fell on a realisation that the era of Erdoğan’s unconventional economics may not be over.
‘Don’t despair’, Kılıçdaroğlu told his supporters on Twitter. ‘We will stand up and take this election together.’
[Photo: Kerem Uzel/Bloomberg via Getty Images]