When the Turkish president appeared in front of his supporters at a quarter to two in the morning, he kept a back door open. "We believe that we will finish this round with more than 50 percent." But if the nation decides to hold a run-off election, it will be just as welcome, said Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the balcony of the AKP party headquarters in Ankara. Shortly thereafter, his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu appeared before the press with his allies. "Elections can't be won on the balcony," he railed. "We will win this election in the second round."
Friederike Böge
Political correspondent for Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan based in Ankara.
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In fact, on Monday morning, everything pointed to a run-off election. According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, Erdogan was ahead with 98.49 percent after counting more than 3 percent of the ballot boxes. Kilicdaroglu came to 45 percent. The independent news agency Anka came to almost the same conclusion. At least some of the remaining votes apparently come from opposition strongholds. She accused the government camp of deliberately slowing down the counting in numerous polling stations through objections. As an example, Kilicdaroglu cited a polling station where eleven recounts had been carried out. Claims by the opposition over the course of election night that the numbers showed a clear lead for their candidate did not seem to be confirmed.
Both camps are confident of victory
If there is a run-off election in two weeks, the incumbent will probably have a head start. His alliance is heading for an absolute majority in parliament. After counting around 88 percent of the ballot boxes, 322 of the 600 seats are in the presidential camp. This could persuade many voters in the second round of the presidential election to vote for stability instead of voting for a candidate who would not have his own majority in parliament.
The AKP indicated, however, that it reserves the right to challenge the results before the appeal period expires on Tuesday afternoon. So the uncertainty remains. The country is expected to face a turbulent two weeks. Both camps were confident of victory. The fact that, according to the preliminary figures, there is no winner for the time being has to do with the third candidate. The ultra-nationalist Sinan Ogan won more than five percent of the vote. His voters are considered protest voters. However, it is uncertain whether they would choose the challenger in a run-off election.
The High Electoral Council initially kept a low profile on the question of whether there would be a run-off election. "The counting is ongoing," said the head of the electoral council, Ahmet Yener. For the time being, he only announced the result for just under 92 percent of the ballot boxes: Erdogan 49.5 percent. Kilicdaroglu 44.8 percent. The difference to the state news agency is explained by different accesses to the same data. At each polling station, the election observers of the parties publish the respective results, which can be accessed by Anadolu and other media. However, the High Electoral Council only feeds the results into its database when they are communicated from the local to the national level via several instances.
This system is intended to help prevent electoral fraud. On election night, it often leads to a distortion of the results. The opposition accused the Anadolu news agency of publishing the results from AKP strongholds first in order to portray the president as the winner early on and to demoralize opposition election observers. "The fiction that started with 60 percent has now fallen below 50 percent," Kilicdaroglu said during the night. In fact, the large lead that Anadolu attributed to the president continued to shrink over the course of election night, slipping below the crucial 50 percent mark shortly before midnight. Again and again, the opposition called on its election observers not to take their eyes off the ballot boxes despite the late hour.
The ruling party accused the opposition camp of disrupting the integrity of the electoral process with its criticism of the state news agency and the AKP's objections in individual polling stations. Erdogan presented himself as a model democrat and accused his opponents of undemocratic methods. "Our country held a festival of democracy on May 14," he said on the balcony of his party headquarters. Even before that, he had accused the opposition of "usurping the will of the nation" by hastily publishing its own data.
Both camps praised the high voter turnout, for which no final figure is yet available. Erdogan spoke of "one of the highest in our history". Kilicdaroglu said the turnout was just under 90 percent.
There was confusion during the night about the president's whereabouts. In the early evening, Anadolu reported that Erdogan had flown from Istanbul to Ankara to spend election night there. This later turned out to be a hoax. Late in the evening, Erdogan showed up with supporters in Istanbul. It was not until after midnight that he flew to Ankara in the capital to give his traditional election evening speech from the balcony of the party headquarters. Several media reported, citing government circles, that the confusion was a security measure.