Erdogan leads as Turkey heads for election run-off

Turkey's battle for the presidency looks almost certain to go to a run-off, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan set for a four-point lead in the first round.

(BBC) Turkey's battle for the presidency looks almost certain to go to a run-off, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan set for a four-point lead in the first round.

After 20 years in power, he stood on the balcony of his party HQ saying he was convinced he would win five more.

Opposition challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu also claimed to have victory in his grasp.

Everything appeared to have fallen into place for first-round success.

But incomplete results give him around 45%, with Mr Erdogan on more than 49% of the vote. Candidates need more than 50% to win in the first round.

And Mr Erdogan has an added boost as he seeks to extend his presidency. His People's Alliance of parties has also won a majority in parliament, according to preliminary figures provided by the state news agency.

For months, Turkey's disparate opposition parties had pooled their resources in a bid to bring an end to a president who has extended his power dramatically since a failed coup against him in 2016.

And Turks went out to vote in very high numbers. Officials put the turnout at 88.8%.

The election is being watched very closely in the West, because Mr Kilicdaroglu has promised to revive Turkish democracy as well as relations with its Nato allies. On the other hand, President Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government has accused the West of plotting to bring him down and Turkey's candidacy for the EU has long been on ice.

In the early hours of Monday, Mr Kilicdaroglu stood on a stage at his party headquarters in Ankara, flanked by his allies, doing his best to sound upbeat.

"If our nation says second round, we will absolutely win in the second round," he said.

Party spokesman Faik Oztrak later reinforced his comments, adding that they would do everything they could in the two weeks before the run-off.Supporters outside party headquarters chanted one of his slogans, "everything will be all right", but it was not clear for them that it would.

The opposition leader had earlier angrily accused the government of seeking to "block the will of the people", by launching repeated challenges in opposition strongholds. Two rising stars in the party, the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, reminded voters that this was a strategy that Mr Erdogan's AK Party had used before.

They praised an enormous team of opposition volunteers guarding ballot papers to ensure nothing untoward happened to the votes.

Mr Kilicdaroglu, 74, has lost several elections as leader of his Republican People's Party, but this time his message of scrapping the president's excessive powers struck a chord.

Turks have also been reeling from a cost-of-living crisis with 44% inflation, made only worse by Mr Erdogan's unorthodox economic policies. It was of little surprise that Turkey's Bist-100 stock market dropped 2.7% on Monday morning, and the Turkish lira fell back too.

And then the Erdogan government was blamed for a slow rescue response to the double earthquakes in February which killed more than 50,000 people in 11 provinces.

And yet, despite a very difficult few months, Turkey's dominant president appears to have the upper hand.

Overnight results suggest the president's support in eight party strongholds hit by the earthquake dipped by just two to three points.

In seven of those eight cities, his support remained above 60%. Only in Gaziantep did it slip to 59%.

Addressing supporters from the balcony he had used for previous victories he announced that "even though the final results are not in, we are far ahead".

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