“Manipulation of numbers”: Erdogan’s challenger claims lead in Turkish presidential elections | Abroad

LOOK. Turkish elections could be end of an era

According to state media, Erdogan, who has been at the head of the country for 20 years, currently has 54.3 percent. According to the preliminary results, Kiliçdaroglu would reach 39.8 percent.

However, opposition leaders such as the mayors of Ankara and Istanbul argue that the dates indicate that Kiliçdaroglu will become president and that the figures from Turkish state media should be ignored. For example, Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş says that after 23.87 percent of the votes were counted, Kiliçdaroglu was already in the lead. The latter himself is unambiguous about the course of the vote: “We are in charge,” he said in a first reaction.

And meanwhile, Kiliçdaroglu has also responded on Twitter. “We are leading,” he said in his message. Kiliçdaroglu’s party, the CHP, opposes the figures from state agency Anadolu and speaks of “manipulation”.

A spokesman for the AKP, the ruling party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has refuted opposition allegations that state news agency Anadolu rigged reporting on the vote count. The vote count is “transparent” and “there is no need to panic,” the spokesperson said in a reply to the opposition

After casting his vote on Sunday, Erdogan expressed hope that the outcome of historic presidential and parliamentary elections would be “good for the future of the country,” but did not predict a victory.

“My hope to God is that after the counts are completed tonight, the outcome will be good for the future of our country, for Turkish democracy,” Erdogan said this morning at a polling station in Istanbul. The election promises to be a neck-and-neck race between Erdogan and Kemal Kiliçdaroglu of the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP). The 74-year-old presidential candidate of the main opposition alliance cast his vote at a polling station in Ankara.

The presidential elections are seen as a duel between incumbent President Erdogan and opposition leader Kiliçdaroglu. The opposition has mobilized en masse to monitor the fairness of the ballot box. Kiliçdaroglu’s party had already announced that it would deploy hundreds of thousands of observers at the approximately 50,000 polling stations in the country.

In Turkey, 64.2 million voters were allowed to vote today. Abroad, 3.4 million Turks were able to do this before. The ballot boxes closed at 5 p.m. local time (hours earlier with us). The first results are expected in the coming hours. If neither candidate obtains an absolute majority (more than 50 percent of the vote), a second round will take place on May 28.

A high turnout was expected. Long queues formed at polling stations in some places. In the previous national election in 2018, voters also voted en masse. The voter turnout was about 86 percent. If Erdogan is not re-elected, he will hand over power peacefully, he promised on Friday. According to state media, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said that at least 600,000 security forces are on the move.

The 600vekil, a weighted poll of all Turkish polls combined, predicted the chances of victory for Kıliçdaroglu on Saturday at 63 percent versus 35 percent for Erdogan. Polls in recent days have increasingly suggested that Erdogan’s governing coalition, led by his Justice and Development Party (AKP), could lose its majority in parliament.

Many parties hope to get a seat in parliament. There are 24 parties on the ballots. They would therefore sometimes be almost a meter long. Some voters say they have difficulty getting their ballots for parliamentary and presidential elections in the same envelope.