From the BZ editorial team
Even before all the votes were counted, it was clear and finally confirmed: Erdogan won the presidential elections in Turkey and will remain president!
Shortly after 9:30 p.m. German time, the head of the electoral authority, Ahmet Yener, said that the counts were still ongoing, but that challenger Kilicdaroglu could no longer catch up.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (69) won the runoff election. His rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu (74) failed.
︎ The official result after counting 99 percent of the votes: Erdogan has achieved the majority with 52.14 percent of the votes, Kilicdaroglu has 47.86 percent. This was announced by the Turkish electoral authority on Sunday evening.
Erdogan had already declared himself the winner of the presidential election before the end of the vote count. He thanks everyone who would have made it possible for him to govern for the next five years, Erdogan told cheering supporters in Istanbul on Sunday. He will be with his followers “to the grave”. In Ankara, motorcades with waving flags were already filling the streets in the early evening. Horn concerts could also be heard in Istanbul.
Many Turks in Berlin are very happy about Erdogan’s victory Photo: spreepicture
The Turkish President doesn’t bother taunting his rival Kilicdaroglu. “It’s always called ‘Bay Bay Kemal’ (bye, bye Kemal, editor’s note). (…) If you want, we can add a third bay. Bay, Bay, Bay Kemal,” Erdogan called out to his supporters.
As in the election campaign, Erdogan agitated against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “My brothers, isn’t this CHP for LGBT?” he said on Sunday, referring to Kilicdaroglu’s party. There is nothing like that in his own electoral alliance, according to Erdogan. He received a loud applause from the audience.
The election victory is celebrated extensively on the Kudamm and Tauentzien Photo: spreepicture
According to preliminary figures from Anadolu, a clear victory for Erdogan was also emerging in Germany – after almost 45 percent of the votes counted, the head of state was 67 percent.
Turks celebrated the incumbent president’s victory before he was confirmed. A motorcade pushed through the Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzien. A crowd celebrated at the Memorial Church from 8 p.m.
Berlin’s Turks celebrate Erdogan with motorcades Photo: spreepicture
In 2018, Erdogan had already received 64.8 percent of the votes from the German-Turks. According to observers, there are several reasons for Erdogan’s high popularity among this group: Many migrant workers with a religiously conservative attitude came to Germany from the Anatolian heartland of Turkey.
Erdogan’s governing party, the AKP, also has good structures in Germany today. According to observers, many households are shaped by Turkish media, much of which is controlled by the government. According to Yunus Ulusoy from the Center for Turkish Studies, there is also a kind of protest attitude, especially among younger voters in Germany, due to experiences of discrimination.
Around 1.5 million German-Turks are entitled to vote in Germany. In the run-off election – as in the first ballot – they did not vote on Sunday, but a few days beforehand. They had to cast their votes by last Wednesday.