Turkey’s election likely heading to runoff

QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Turkey likely appeared on Sunday to head toward a runoff presidential election after a stormy night in which neither Tayyip Erdogan nor rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu cleared the result.

With almost 96% of ballot boxes counted, Erdogan had 49.4% of the vote. While His main challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, had 44.8% after the gap between the two shrank as the night went on.  

If neither candidate secures more than 50%, the two will compete head-to-head on May 28. Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Board, said it was providing numbers to competing political parties “instantly” but would not make the results public until the count was completed and finalized.

Reuters cited a senior official from the opposition alliance – CHP – as saying: “It seems there will be no winner in the first round. But, our data indicates Kilicdaroglu will lead.”

Another senior opposition official told Reuters that Erdogan’s party was raising objections against ballots, delaying full results. “So far they are doing everything in their power to delay the process,” he said.

Voting for Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections has begun in the country. Polling centers opened at 8 am and closed at 5 pm.

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 the parliamentary election also held Sunday. Voters would not want a “divided government,” according to the Associated Press.

Voting in Turkey is already off to a rocky start. The Cumhuriyet newspaper reported of an alleged fraud in Giresum province, on the Black Sea coast. Over 100 boxes of blank ballots there had been sealed in such a way as to appear to be marked in favour of Erdogan. Reportedly, lawyers were notified.

Leading opposition figures said the government was purposely slowing down the count in districts where Kilicdaroglu was enjoying strong support. “They are contesting the count emerging from ballot boxes where we are massively ahead,” Istanbul’s opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu told reporters.

Reporting by John Ahmad