Turkish Presidential Election Heads to Runoff
Neither President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has ruled for 20 years, nor Opposition Leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu managed to get more than 50% of the votes in last week’s election
Polls for the Turkish presidential runoff elections opened for Turks living outside the country on Saturday. Out of the 64 million Turks registered to vote in the election, about 3.4 million are abroad.
Voters based in Turkey are set to head to the polls for the second time this month on Sunday, May 28. In last Sunday’s elections, none of the presidential candidates succeeded in winning more than 50% of the votes, forcing the election into a runoff.
Now President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will go head-to-head with Opposition Leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party and its nationalist allies won a comfortable parliamentary majority in the first round of voting. In the presidential election, Erdoğan beat Kılıçdaroğlu by about four percentage points, narrowly missing out on a first-round win.
The results put Erdoğan in a strong position to win, but the opposition hasn’t given up hope.
After a disappointing second-place finish in the election, Kılıçdaroğlu has shifted his strategy leading up to the runoff. To court Turkish nationalists, including those who had supported the far-right candidate Sinan Oğan, Kılıçdaroğlu vowed on Thursday to deport millions of migrants.
Winning only about 5% of the vote, Oğan is now positioned as a potential kingmaker.
You have deliberately brought more than 10 million refugees to this country. … As soon as I come to power, I will send all the refugees home.
Kılıçdaroğlu accused Erdoğan of failing to protect Turkey’s borders. “You have deliberately brought more than 10 million refugees to this country. … As soon as I come to power, I will send all the refugees home,” he said on Thursday.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are about 4 million refugees in Turkey.
The West is closely watching the Turkish elections. Turkey is a member of NATO, and Erdoğan’s relationship with the US and the EU have long been strained.
Most polls had predicted that Kılıçdaroğlu would best Erdoğan, who has faced harsh criticism over various policies.
Kılıçdaroğlu, an economist backed by an alliance of six opposition parties, has blamed Erdoğan’s policies for the country’s struggling economy.
Erdoğan’s critics also blame him for the country’s lackluster response to February’s earthquakes, which killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and left hundreds of thousands homeless or displaced.
Despite these criticisms, many analysts warn against writing off Erdoğan, who has ruled Turkey for 20 years.
Yusuf Erim, editor-at-large for Turkey’s English-language public broadcaster TRT World, and Sami Hamdi, managing director of the risk and intelligence company International Interest, held a discussion about the first round of the Turkish elections and what to expect from next week’s runoff.
