After months of campaigning by two dozen political parties, four presidential candidates and a bewildering lineup of electoral alliances, Turkish voters head to the polls, again, on Sunday, to make a critical choice between two men.
The first round two weeks ago saw Erdogan clinch 49.52% of the votes and Kilicdaroglu 44.88%. To win the election, a candidate must receive a simple majority of the votes.
Erdogan said that on May 28, Turkish voters would have to make "the most important choice of their lives, a decision concerning the future" of the country and its children.
Kilicdaroglu, for his part, noted that "for the first time, Turkish citizens will have to choose between two candidates and two worldviews.
Sinan Ogan, the third-placed candidate in the first round, who received 5% of the votes, announced on Monday that he was throwing his support behind Erdogan in the upcoming run-off and called on his supporters to vote for the incumbent president.
The head of Turkey election board has said that Erdogan has been reelected as Turkey’s president in the runoff vote, according to unofficial results.
Ahmet Yener said that Erdogan had received 52.1 percent of votes and Kilicdaroglu scored 47.9 percent with almost all ballots counted.
The Iranian president has offered congratulation to his Turkish counterpart on the re-election in the Turkish presidential runoff.
In a message on Sunday afternoon, President Ebrahim Raeisi congratulated Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his victory in the Turkish presidential election.
The Iranian president considered the election victory as signaling the continued valuable trust that the Turkish people have in Erdogan.
“We have completed the second round of presidential election with the favour of our nation,” Erdogan has said.
“We will be ruling the country for the coming five years,” he told his cheering supporters from atop a bus in his home district in Istanbul. “God willing, we will be deserving of your trust.”
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