NAfter hours of counting, Turkish media reports that incumbent Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is further ahead in the presidential race. State news agency Anadolu, but also opposition-backed news agency Anga, found themselves in office ahead of his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu on Monday night.
According to Anga, after counting 99.4 percent of the votes, Erdogan can count on 49.3 percent and opposition leader Kilicdaroglu 45 percent. According to Anadolu, after 96 percent of the votes were counted, Erdogan had 49.4 percent and Klikdaroglu 44.8 percent.
Meanwhile, Election Commission Chairman Ahmed Yener has said that there has been a delay in counting the votes received from abroad. After counting 40 percent of the foreign vote, Erdogan was ahead of his rival here too, 56 percent to 40 percent.
Votes from abroad could still influence the outcome. Approximately 3.4 million eligible voters account for 5.3 percent. According to preliminary figures from Anadolu, voter turnout was around 52 percent and around 88 percent locally. According to Yener, nearly 90 percent of domestic polls and 31 percent of polls abroad were opened within an hour after midnight (CEST).
Current developments in Live Ticker:
1:34 am – Erdogan sees himself “overwhelming” in the presidential race
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees himself “overwhelming” in the presidential election. Erdogan told supporters in Ankara on Monday night that it would take some time for the preliminary results to be published.
He said that everyone should respect the will of the people. “We don’t know yet that the election will end in the first round, but if the people send us to the second round, we will respect that as well,” Erdogan said. His government coalition’s majority emerges in parliament. Hence, he is confident that voters will want “security and stability” in the second phase of elections.
Erdogan notes that parliament and the president could theoretically block each other if a majority of parliamentarians went to a ruling coalition, but the presidency went to the opposition or vice versa. While the President can issue an ordinance without the consent of the Parliament, if the Parliament enacts a law on the same subject, the ordinance is void.
12:16 am – Turkish opposition leader: Don’t leave the ballot box
Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has called on his supporters to stay at the ballot box until the end of the vote count. “Never give up on elections and election commissions,” he said in Ankara on Monday night. “We’ll be here until every vote is counted.”
Kilicdaroglu said many provinces where opposition parties are traditionally strong are still unaccounted for. “In the polling stations where we have more votes, they block the system with subsequent objections,” he says of the actions of the Islamic-conservative ruling party, AKP.
About 300 ballot boxes have been protested in Ankara, and about 780 in Istanbul. It is Turkey’s choice that you block. You can’t stop people from coming up with appeals,” Kilicdaroglu said.
11:31 pm – Government and opposition accuse each other of sabotage
In Turkey, the government and the opposition were accusing each other even before the end of the vote count. AKP spokesman Ömer Celik accused the CHP of sabotage surrounding hopeful presidential candidate Kemal Celikdaroglu. CHP politician Ekrem Imamoglu accused government agencies of disseminating false preliminary figures that glossed over the values of official Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both parties said they would meet before the elections.
10:02 pm – Cyber attack on popular newspaper in Turkey
In the midst of Turkish elections, one of the most popular daily newspapers has been the target of a cyber attack. The website of “Sözcü”, a high-circulation newspaper attributed to the opposition camp, was unavailable on Sunday evening.
Netblocks, an organization known for monitoring internet blockages, reported a DDos attack on the newspaper’s servers as the cause. Attackers flood victims’ servers with a flood of data requests to cripple them.
Ahead of landmark presidential and parliamentary elections, observers had warned of attacks on independent reporting in the country.
9:37 pm – Erdogan accused the opposition of “stealing the national will”.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described opposition statements during the ongoing vote count as “stealing the national will”. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition candidate and Erdoğan’s strongest rival, had previously said he was ahead.
21:04 – Left boss: Banned from using election observers from Germany
Election observers from Germany are banned from working in Turkey, Left Party leader Janin Whistler said. Armed police officers prevented some observers from the left-wing group from entering the polling stations, Whistler told the AFP news agency on Sunday. Observers from Germany stationed in Kurdish areas in the east of the country reported a heavy presence of generally armed police officers and soldiers.
Hakan Das, an election observer on behalf of the left, explained that not only German but also independent Turkish election observers were denied access to the polling stations. As a result, the police and army violated the agreement with the electoral commission, he told the AFP news agency by telephone. Das added that observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring Turkey’s elections with a total of 400 experts, are barely represented in Kurdish areas.
4:00 PM – Close the polls in Turkey
Polling stations for the presidential and parliamentary elections are closed. Approximately 200,000 bars were closed at 5 pm local time (4 pm CEST), and a higher turnout was reported earlier from many locations. The first results of the election, which is seen as a referendum on the future of longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are expected in the evening.
3:00 PM – Erdoğan arrived in Ankara
Contrary to expectations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Ankara after the vote in Istanbul. The president landed in the capital on Sunday afternoon, state news agency Anadolu reported. At noon, Erdogan said he would follow the parliamentary and presidential election results from Istanbul.
2:55 pm –Electoral authority: Turkish elections have not had any problems so far
The Election Commission said that the election was held in the afternoon without any major incidents. “So far, the elections have been held without any problems,” said YSK Election Commission Chairman Anadolu. The pro-Kurdish opposition HDP confirmed a media report that election observers of sister party YSP were attacked in the southeastern Turkish city of Martin. An altercation broke out when observers refused to allow more than one family member to enter the polling booth.
A deputy from the CHP He shared a video, purportedly showing how rows of ballot papers for President Erdogan were stamped in Sanliurfa, southeastern Turkey. It was not possible to verify when and where the registrations were made and whether the ballots were genuine.
Max Lux, a Green Party politician and election observer for the Council of Europe, said the situation in the Kurdish metropolis of Diyarbakir was calm. He has never experienced the city as “calm and quiet” as this weekend. “Our report on Monday will show whether this sentiment is reflected in election monitoring results.”
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