With nine out of ten vote boxes tallied, the incumbent president is ahead by five points.
According to a report from Turkey’s Anadolu Agency on Sunday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is leading Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the second round of voting. Despite not winning a majority in the first round of voting, Erdogan seems poised to easily beat his pro-Western opponent this time around.
For the second time in two weeks, voting began on Sunday throughout Turkey in a runoff election that will decide whether Erdogan keeps his position as president or is removed by his more liberal rival.
With 93% of the ballot boxes unsealed by Sunday evening, Erdogan has 52.5% of the vote versus Kilicdaroglu’s 47.5%, according to Anadolu Agency.
85% of those who were entitled to vote did so, which was a modest decline from the first round on May 14 in terms of turnout. An attendance rate of approximately 90% was seen two weeks before.
On May 14, Erdogan received 49.5% of the vote, while Kilicdaroglu received 44.8%. Sinan Ogan, who finished in third place with 5% of the vote, was disqualified since no contender received more than 50% of the vote.
Last Monday, Ogan backed Erdogan. However, not all of his supporters supported the incumbent, with about similar numbers switching to Kilicdaroglu on Sunday.
Erdogan is a socially conservative president who took office in 2014 after serving as prime minister for 11 years. Under his direction, Turkey has worked to forge deeper diplomatic and commercial connections with China and Russia while portraying itself as a possible mediator in international disputes, such as the one in Ukraine.
In his own country, Erdogan strengthened the authority of his own office in response to a failed coup attempt in 2016. He also appealed to conservative Muslim voters by lifting a long-standing prohibition on religious head coverings in public places and redesignating Istanbul’s famed Hagia Sophia as a mosque.
Kilicdaroglu is a moderate who wants to roll back several of Erdogan’s domestic policies, especially the constitutional amendments made in 2016. If elected, he has pledged to initiate EU membership discussions right once, repair fences with Turkey’s NATO partners, and boost the economy of the nation.
