Erdogan wins highly-contested runoff
Turkey’s incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won the country’s runoff election on Sunday.
Erdogan declared victory Sunday in his country’s runoff election, extending his rule into a third decade.
With nearly 99% of ballot boxes opened, unofficial results from competing news agencies showed Erdogan with 52% of the vote, compared with 48% for his challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, AP reported.
In his first comments since the polls closed, Erdogan spoke to supporters on a campaign bus outside his home in Istanbul.
“I thank each member of our nation for entrusting me with the responsibility to govern this country once again for the upcoming five years,” he said.
“The only winner today is Turkey,” Erdogan said.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi extended his congratulation to his Turkish counterpart.
In Istanbul, Erdogan supporters began celebrating even before the final results arrived, waving Turkish or ruling party flags, and honking car horns.
Turkey stands at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and it plays a key role in NATO.
Erdogan, 69, defied opinion polls and came out ahead with an almost five-point lead over Kilicdaroglu in the first round on May 14. But he fell just short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff, in a race with profound consequences for Turkey itself and global geopolitics.
His unexpectedly strong showing amid a deep cost of living crisis, and a win in parliamentary elections for a coalition of his conservative AK Party (AKP), the nationalist MHP and others, buoyed the veteran campaigner who says a vote for him is a vote for stability.
Polls closed at 5 p.m. (1400 GMT) after opening at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT). The outcome is expected to start becoming clear by early evening local time. Polling stations were reportedly quieter in many places than two weeks ago, when turnout was 89%.
The election will decide not only who leads Turkey, a NATO-member country of 85 million, but also how it is governed, where its economy is headed after its currency plunged to one-tenth of its value against the dollar in a decade, and the shape of its foreign
policy.