The second round of voting in Turkey ended, and the result was a victory for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who defeated Kemal Kilicdaroglu and secured another five years in power. The current president came to power in 2003 as prime minister, a position he held until 2014, when he was elected president. Until the 2017 constitutional referendum, it was the prime minister who held the "real" power, something that was then centralized directly in the figure of the president, in this case, Erdogan.
The Supreme Electoral Board, the highest electoral authority in the country, declared him the winner with 52.1% of the votes, while his Social Democrat rival received 47.9%. Although the president struggled in the first round, he came in as the favorite to win the second round, which he ended up winning by a looser margin than expected. Nominally speaking, he obtained 27,513,587 votes, 2 million more than his opponent.
Erdogan celebrated his victory at his residence in Istanbul, where he thanked his supporters and assured that the victory belongs to the country's 85 million citizens. "I want to thank each and every member of my nation who gave us the responsibility of governing our country for five years with your election. I hope we will be worthy of your trust as it has been for 21 years," he said.
"We completed the second round of the presidential election with the favor of our nation. I would like to express my gratitude to my nation for giving us a day of democracy," he added.
Büyük Türkiye Zaferi ile...
BAŞLASIN TÜRKİYE YÜZYILI! 🇹🇷
— Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (@RTErdogan) May 28, 2023
The president has already defined his agenda for the next five years: to fight inflation. "The most urgent issue of the coming days is to eliminate the problems arising from the price increases caused by inflation and to compensate for welfare losses. If we do it, we will do it. The interest rate is 8.5% … Inflation will also come down, you will see. They [the opposition] cannot compete with us, they will stand guard at the door of the IMF," he said.
The current president's party had already secured control of Congress in the first round on May 14. On that day, his party won 324 of the 600 available seats, thus guaranteeing itself a solid majority.
"The most unfair election period in our history"
Kilicdaroglu, who spoke from his party's headquarters in Ankara, did not formally concede defeat, and assured that he will continue to fight until there is "real democracy" in Turkey. The opposition saw this election as a good opportunity to defeat Erdogan, save the country from an autocracy and strengthen its relationship with the West.
"This was the most unfair election period in our history. … We did not bow down to the climate of fear. In this election, the will of the people to change an authoritarian government became clear despite all the pressures," said Kilicdaroglu, who foresaw "hard days" for the future of the country.
The opposition denounced a number of irregularities in the electoral process, including physical aggression against election observers, votes in the name of people who did not appear on the ballots, registration of the deceased as voters, and the delivery of pre-stamped ballots.
Ozgür Ozel, deputy chairman of the CHP parliamentary group, stated that a former deputy from Istanbul and several party poll watchers were beaten in Sanliurfa for reporting the aforementioned irregularities.
