updates
Controversy over the outcome of the election
Erdogan accuses the opposition of “stealing the national will”.
05/14/2023 9:53 p.m
Even before the end of the count, the government and the opposition are still arguing about the outcome of the presidential elections. “The fiction that started with 60 percent has now fallen below 50 percent,” explains opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu. President Erdogan countered with serious allegations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described statements by the opposition during the ongoing vote count as “stealing the national will”. The opposition candidate and Erdogan’s strongest challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, had previously stated that he was ahead.
There is a dispute between the opposition and the government over the figures from the state news agency Anadolu. According to her, after counting 80 percent of the votes, Erdogan was just over 50 percent, Kilicdaroglu around 44 percent. If no candidate achieves an absolute majority, there will be a runoff on May 28th.
The opposition doubts the statements made by Anadolu. “The fiction that started at 60 percent has now dropped below 50 percent,” Kilicdaroglu wrote on Twitter. Like Erdogan, he called on the election observers to oversee the count to the end. “We won’t sleep tonight,” said Kilicdaroglu, head of the social-democratic-Kemalist CHP and joint candidate of a six-party alliance.
According to Anadolu, the ultra-nationalist candidate Sinan Ogan was around 5.3 percent. Muharrem Ince of the Fatherland Party withdrew his candidacy shortly before the election, but his name was still on the ballot papers. It was provisionally at 0.5 percent.
Opposition does not believe Anadolu figures
Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul and party friend of Kilicdaroglu, accused the AKP of tactical maneuvers in the counting of votes. In opposition strongholds, President Erdogan’s party deliberately objected to the results. This makes counting slower and the result is initially in favor of the government. Imamoglu called for ignoring the official figures. “We don’t believe Anadolu,” he said.
According to observers, voter turnout was remarkably high despite compulsory voting, but the official figure was not initially published. In the last national election in 2018, the 69-year-old Erdogan won the first round with 52.5 percent of the votes, and the turnout was over 86 percent.
The election campaign was tense and considered unfair, mainly because of the government’s superior media power. The dominant theme was the poor economic situation with massive inflation. Erdogan promised, among other things, an increase in civil servants’ salaries and further investments in the defense industry. He waged an aggressive campaign, calling the opposition “terrorists”. Erdogan has ruled the country with its 85 million inhabitants for two decades; since 2003 initially as Prime Minister and since 2014 as President.