Turkey’s Presidential run-off has been fixed for May 28, 2023 The supreme election council has confirmed that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s powerful president, will face off against his rival from the opposition in a run-off election.
According to its chairman, Mr. Erdogan had a 49.5% first-round victory margin.
Despite having a significant lead over his main rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who received 44.8% of the vote, he still needed more than 50% of the vote to win the election outright.
On May 28, a second round will be held. Mr. Erdogan is the undisputed favorite.
The president’s opponent urged supporters not to “fall into despair” and to stand and fight the election together just before Ahmet Yener, the election council’s leader, made his announcement.
Over the course of his more than 20 years in office, Mr. Erdogan has expanded his authority after a failed coup attempt in 2016. He first came to power in Turkey as prime minister and later as president.
Because of a broad coalition of parties, Mr. Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy was seen as the opposition’s best opportunity to date to unseat him from office.
According to Mr. Yener, 88.29% of eligible voters in Turkey cast ballots in the election on Sunday. All of the ballot boxes have been opened. The fact that some votes cast abroad had not yet been tallied was evident, though.
The international election watchdog OSCE called attention to a number of irregularities and claimed that Mr. Erdogan and the ruling parties had “an unjustified advantage.”
