The current Turkish president Tayyip Erdoğan was the winner of the 2nd round of the presidential elections held on Sunday, May 28 in Turkey, in which he managed to gather just over 52% of the vote against his rival, the candidate of the coalition of 6 Turkish opposition parties, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who gained less than 48% of the vote.
Kılıçdaroğlu still obtains 3 more points of support compared to the results of the 1st round, while Erdoğan increases his share of votes by 2.6 points to over 52%, achieving a result very similar to that of the first presidential elections in 2018.
In an election day that generally passed peacefully and without serious incidents (and even with some curious anecdote), thanks to the deployment of more than 600,000 members of the security forces, and in which almost 54 million Turkish citizens went to ballot boxes with a participation that reached almost 86% (even so, 3 points below the 1st round), with 100% of the votes already counted Erdoğan received the support of 27.8 million voters while his rival gathered 25.5 million votes, both surpassing their results from the 1st round of the presidential elections (700,000 more votes for Erdoğan, and about 900,000 more for Kılıçdaroğlu).
In Istanbul, Kılıçdaroğlu was ahead in the vote count from the beginning, getting 51.78% of the votes, while in Ankara the ballot count was more close, and as in the 1st round, Erdoğan started winning but finally the leader of the opposition prevailed with 51.23% of the votes. Although in the rest of Turkey there were no major changes in the second round, this time Erdoğan also ended up winning in the province of Hatay, one of the most affected by the terrible earthquakes in February, and which had resisted him in the 1st round; in any case, he won by a minimum difference of just over 2,000 ballots.
When it comes to the vote of Turkish expats, Erdoğan was again the clear favorite among expatriate Turks (almost 60% supported the current president) highlighting especially the support received in two countries with significant Turkish minorities in Europe, Germany and France, which have a population of about 4 million Turks and in which, in both cases, the vote in favor of the current Turkish president was around 67%.
Erdoğan: “The only winner today is Turkey”
The defeat of Kılıçdaroğlu, who after 13 years at the head of the opposition is once again defeated despite having gathered the support of 8 parties, including Kurdish nationalists, is a severe blow to an opposition that was running in these elections with two main objectives: overthrow Erdoğan, and to put an end to the presidential system that was approved in a referendum in 2017.
From Istanbul, and with the vote count almost over and giving him the victory of the presidential elections in Turkey, Erdoğan addressed a group of his supporters to thank them for their support: “We will rule the country for the next 5 years, and God willing, we will earn your trust”, said the Turkish president, who also added that “the only winner today is Turkey“.
VOTE
As a history lover, Pablo Gómez was captivated by Turkey from the first day he visited it in 2006: he got married there, has a house there… and has since become an expert on Turkey’s current affairs. With a long experience in media, he has been at the helm of hispanatolia.com since 2011.
