ISTANBUL (dpa-AFX) – In the presidential election in Turkey, incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ahead according to the first, not yet reliable, partial results of the state agency. After counting more than 25 percent of the votes, Erdogan came to around 54 percent, as the state news agency Anadolu reported on Sunday evening. Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu was in second place with around 40 percent.
The spokesman for Kilicdaroglu’s CHP party, Faik Öztrak, said the first data they received were “extremely positive” for the opposition. He accused Anadolu of “manipulation”.
The state agency usually first publishes the counting results in Erdogan strongholds. The first data therefore do not yet allow any conclusions to be drawn about the final result.
Around 64 million people in Germany and abroad who were eligible to vote were invited to vote. In Germany, around 1.5 million people with a Turkish passport were entitled to vote. Around 192,000 ballot boxes were set up in Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of government and opposition observers are on duty./jam/DP/mis