Turkiye polls heading for historic runoff

ANKARA, Turkiye — Turkiye's presidential election will be decided in a runoff, election officials said on Monday, after a night of high drama showed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan edging ahead of his secular rival but failing to secure a first-round win.

The May 28 second-round vote will determine if a NATO ally that straddles Europe and Asia but borders Syria and Iran remains under Erdogan's governing or runs into a different path led by his main rival, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

This year's election largely centered on domestic issues such as the economy, civil rights and a February earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people. But Western countries and foreign investors also awaited the outcome because of Erdogan's unorthodox leadership of the economy and his often mercurial but successful efforts to put Turkiye at the center of international negotiations.

Preliminary results showed Erdogan won 49.5 percent of the vote, while Kilicdaroglu grabbed 44.9 percent, and the third candidate, Sinan Ogan, received 5.2 percent, said Ahmet Yener, the head of the Supreme Electoral Board, Turkiye's election authority.

The remaining uncounted votes were not enough to tip Erdogan into outright victory, even if they all broke for him, Yener said. In the last presidential election in 2018, Erdogan won in the first round, with more than 52 percent of the vote.

The president painted Sunday's vote as a victory both for himself and the country.

"That the election results have not been finalized doesn't change the fact that the nation has chosen us," Erdogan, 69, told supporters early on Monday.

He said he would respect the nation's decision.

Kilicdaroglu, 74, the candidate of a six-party alliance, sounded hopeful, tweeting around the time the runoff was announced: "Don't lose hope. ... We will get up and win this election together."

The Supreme Electoral Board said it was providing numbers to competing political parties "instantly" and would make the results public once the count was completed and finalized.

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 a parliamentary election, also held on Sunday. Voters would not want a "divided government", he said.

Erdogan has governed Turkiye as either prime minister or president since 2003.

In the run-up to the election, opinion surveys had indicated the leader narrowly trailed his challenger.

Omer Celik, a spokesman for Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, in turn, accused the opposition of "an attempt to assassinate the national will". He called the opposition claims "irresponsible".

Candidates' visions

While Erdogan hopes to win a five-year term that would take him well into his third decade as Turkiye's leader, Kilicdaroglu campaigned on promises to repair an economy battered by high inflation and currency devaluation.

Voters also elected lawmakers to fill Turkiye's 600-seat parliament. Erdogan's ruling party alliance was hovering around 49.3 percent, while Kilicdaroglu's Nation Alliance had around 35.2 percent, and support for a pro-Kurdish party stood above 10 percent, Anadolu news agency reported.

More than 64 million people, including overseas voters, were eligible to vote and nearly 89 percent voted.

Erdogan, along with the United Nations, helped mediate a deal with Russia and Ukraine that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach the rest of the world from Black Sea ports despite the continuing conflict between Moscow and Kyiv. The agreement, which is implemented by a center based in Istanbul, is set to expire in days, and Turkiye hosted talks last week to keep it alive.

Agencies Via Xinhua