Turkey heads to runoff elections between Erdogan, Kilicdaroglu
Incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his top rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu will face each other in the runoff on May 28 after a knife-edge race on Sunday.
ANKARA — Turkey’s incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will face main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff election on May 28 after neither candidate crossed the 50% threshold in the first round on Sunday.
Turkey’s High Election Board announced the unofficial results on Monday afternoon local time. The board's head Ahmet Yener said that Erdogan received 49.51% of the votes, finishing the race nearly five percentage points ahead of Kilicdaroglu, whose vote share stood at 44.88%. Far-right fringe candidate Sinan Ogan, meanwhile, received 5.17% of the vote.
In televised remarks, Yener announced that campaigning for the runoff has opened. He added that the counting of absentee ballots was still ongoing but that the remaining uncounted ballots couldn’t take any frontrunners across the threshold.
Voting at home witnessed a higher turnout at 88.92% than the previous parliamentary and presidential elections, according to the initial figures. The official results will be announced on Friday.
