Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo / AP
Voter support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dipped below the majority required to win reelection outright with the unofficial ballot count from Turkey’s national election nearly completed Sunday (local time), making it more likely the country is headed toward a May 28 presidential runoff.
With almost 95 per cent of ballot boxes counted, Erdogan had 49.6 per cent of the vote, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency. His main challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, had 44.7 per cent after the gap between the two shrank as the night went on.
If neither candidate secures more than 50 per cent, the two will compete head-to-head in two weeks. Turkey’s election authority, the Supreme Electoral Board, said it was providing numbers to competing political parties “instantly” but would not make the results public until the count was completed and finalised.
The majority of ballots from the 3.4 million eligible voters living abroad still needed to be tallied, according to the board, and a runoff election was not assured.
Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle East history and politics at St Lawrence University in New York, said Erdogan was likely to have an advantage in a runoff because the president’s party was likely to do better in the parliamentary election also held on Sunday. Voters would not want a “divided government”, he said.
Erdogan, 69, has governed Turkey as either prime minister or president for two decades. In the run-up to the election, opinion surveys had indicated the increasingly authoritarian leader narrowly trailed his challenger.
The race, which largely centred on domestic issues such as the economy, civil rights and a February earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people, had appeared to be shaping up as the toughest re-election bid of the Turkish leader’s 20-year rule.
With the partial results showing otherwise, members of Kilicdaroglu’s centre-left, pro-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP, disputed Anadolu’s numbers, contending the state-run agency was biased in Erodgan’s favour.
Omer Celik, a spokesperson for Erdogan’s Justice and Development, or AK, party, in turn accused the opposition of “an attempt to assassinate the national will” by claiming the state news agency was distorting the results. He called the opposition claims “irresponsible”.
While Erdogan hoped to win a five-year term that would take him well into his third decade as Turkey’s leader, Kilicdaroglu, 74, campaigned on a promise to return the country to a more democratic path and to repair its economy, battered by high inflation and currency devaluation.
Voters also elected lawmakers to fill Turkey’s 600-seat parliament, which lost much of its legislative power after a referendum to change the country’s system of governance to an executive presidency narrowly passed in 2017.
With 92 per cent of ballot boxes counted, Anadolu news agency said Erdogan’s ruling party alliance was hovering below 50 per cent, while Kilicdaroglu’s Nation Alliance had around 35 per cent and a pro-Kurdish party above 10 per cent.
More than 64 million people, including overseas voters, were eligible to vote and nearly 89 per cent voted. This year marks 100 years since Turkey’s establishment as a republic - a modern, secular state born on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.
Voter turnout in Turkey is traditionally strong, despite the government suppressing freedom of expression and assembly over the years and especially since a 2016 coup attempt. Erdogan blamed the failed coup on followers of a former ally, cleric Fethullah Gulen, and initiated a large-scale crackdown on civil servants with alleged links to Gulen and on pro-Kurdish politicians.
Internationally, the elections were seen as a test of a united opposition’s ability to dislodge a leader who has concentrated nearly all state powers in his hands and worked to wield more influence on the world stage.
Erdogan, along with the United Nations, helped mediate a deal with Ukraine and Russia that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach the rest of the world from Black Sea ports despite Russia’s war in Ukraine. The agreement, which is implemented by a centre based in Istanbul, is set to expire in days, and Turkey hosted talks last week to keep it alive.
But Erdogan also has held up Sweden’s quest to join Nato while demanding concessions, contending that nation was too lenient on followers of the US-based cleric and members of pro-Kurdish groups that Turkey considers national security threats.
Critics maintain the president’s heavy-handed style is responsible for a painful cost-of-living crisis. The latest official statistics put inflation at about 44 per cent, down from a high of around 86 per cent. The price of vegetables became a campaign issue for the opposition, which used an onion as a symbol.
In contrast with mainstream economic thinking, Erdogan contends that high interest rates fuel inflation, and he pressured the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey to lower its main rate multiple times.
Erdogan’s government also faced criticism for its allegedly delayed and stunted response to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that left 11 southern provinces devastated. Lax implementation of building codes is thought to have exacerbated the casualties and misery.
In his election campaign, Erdogan used state resources and his domineering position over media to try to woo voters. He accused the opposition of colluding with “terrorists,” of being “drunkards” and of upholding LGBTQ+ rights, which he depicts as threatening traditional family values in the predominantly Muslim nation.
In a bid to secure support, Erdogan increased wages and pensions and subsidised electricity and gas bills, while showcasing Turkey’s homegrown defence and infrastructure projects.
“Paychecks, or putting food on the table doesn’t necessarily surmount the identification one feels for one’s own political party,” Eissentat, the university professor, said. “Erdogan’s efforts at polarisation, demonisation of the opposition as traitors and as terrorists, the use of culture wars ... that’s all made to play on those dynamics.”
Kilicdaroglu’s Nation Alliance pledged to return Turkey’s governance system to a parliamentary democracy if it won both the presidential and parliamentary ballots. It also promised to restore the independence of the judiciary and the central bank, and to reverse crackdowns on free speech and other forms of democratic backsliding in Turkey.
“We have all missed democracy so much. We all missed being together,” Kilicdaroglu said after voting at a school in Ankara.
Also seeking the presidency was Sinan Ogan, a former academic who had the backing of an anti-immigrant nationalist party and more than 5 per cent of votes tallied so far.
At polling stations, many voters struggled to fold bulky ballot papers - they featured 24 political parties competing for seats in parliament - and to fit them into envelopes along with the ballot for the presidency.
In the 11 provinces affected by the earthquake, nearly nine million people were eligible to vote. Some three million people left the quake zone for other provinces, but only 133,000 people registered to vote at their new locations.
In Diyarbakir, a Kurdish-majority city that was hit by the earthquake, Ramazan Akcay arrived early at his polling station to cast his vote.
“God willing it will be a democratic election,” he said. “May it be beneficial in the name of our country.”
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