Turks abroad begin voting in presidential run-off

Turks living abroad began voting on Saturday in a presidential run-off between President Tayyip Erdogan and rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is seeking to end Erdogan's two-decade rule.

Turkey's run-off election will be held on May 28 after Erdogan led but without exceeding 50 percent of the vote to win the first round of Sunday's presidential election, which was expected to pose his biggest political challenge ever.

About 3.4 million Turks are eligible to vote abroad, out of a total of more than 64 million Turkish voters, and voting abroad will continue from May 20 to 24.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said voting had begun in countries across Asia and Europe. Germany has the world's largest Turkish community with about 1.5 million Turks eligible to vote.

In parliamentary elections also held last Sunday, Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its nationalist allies won a comfortable parliamentary majority.

Kılıçdaroğlu, the candidate of the six-party opposition alliance, won 44.88 percent of the vote in the presidential election to Erdogan's 49.52 percent, defying poll forecasts that put Kilicdaroglu ahead.

Attention is now focused on nationalist candidate Sinan Ogan, who came third with 5.17 percent of the vote. Any decision to support one of the two candidates in the run-off would play a decisive role.

In his speech, Kilicdaroglu shifted to the nationalist tone after Erdogan took the lead in the first round, noting that the government had allowed ten million refugees into the country and vowing to send them all home if elected.

Kilicdaroglu did not provide any evidence of the number of migrants he referred. Official statistics say Turkey has the largest refugee population in the world, at around four million.