Turkey elections: Erdogan takes early lead as results trickle in
Preliminary results from Turkey's presidential election show that incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ahead of his opposition rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, with more than 96 percent of the votes, as counting continues across the country.
The state-run Anadolu Agency announced on Sunday afternoon that Erdogan’s AK Party, with 48.39 percent of votes, outperformed Kilicdaroglu's CHP with 44.92 percent, although the gap was expected to narrow as more votes are counted.
Sinan Ogan, the third presidential candidate of the nationalist Ancestral Alliance (ATA), only enjoyed 5.25 percent of the votes.
Initial results were expected to be favorable for Erdogan, as many of the first-time voters typically hail from his conservative, rural heartland.
However, four sources from Turkey's opposition said they believed Kilicdaroglu was ahead by a narrow margin. The opposition mayors of Istanbul and Ankara also claimed that Kilicdaroglu was on track for victory based on nearly a quarter of the ballot boxes counted.
Sunday's vote is one of the most consequential elections in the country's 100-year history, a contest that could end Erdogan's 20-year rule and reverberate well beyond Turkey's borders.
Turkey’s parliamentary and presidential polls opened at 8 am (0500 GMT) and closed at 5 pm (1400 GMT) on Sunday, with roughly 64 million people being eligible to vote, including 3.4 million overseas voters and nearly six million first-time voters.
The elections have posed the biggest challenge yet to 69-year-old Erdogan, amid the economic downturn and the impact of the devastating February 6 earthquake.
His main rival, Kilicdaroglu, has promised to fix Turkey’s faltering economy and restore democratic institutions compromised during Erdogan’s rule.
Erdogan, on the other hand, has been extolling the virtues of his long rule, campaigning on a platform of stability, independent foreign policy, and continuing to bolster Turkey’s defense industry.
Recently, he raised the wages of government workers by 45 percent and lowered the retirement age. His AK Party has been in power since November 2002, and he has ruled Turkey since 2003.
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