Voting operations began at 8 am local time, 7 am in Italy. The polling stations remained open until 5 pm, 4 pm in Italy. Then the card counting began. Including the number of residents abroad, those eligible to vote totaled over 64.1 million people. Five arrest warrants for voting post
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The citizens of Turkey have voted for the ballot that decides who will lead the country: the polling stations were closed at 4 pm in Italy and the polls began. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, outgoing president, is convinced of victory: “Over the last 21 years Turkey has trusted us and tomorrow (today, ndr) we too will give confidence to Turkey”. If he wins, he would start his third term and would be at the helm until 2028. Erdogan is following the count from Istanbul, where he voted together with his wife Emine in the Uskudar district. Around 6 pm local should arrive in the capital Ankara: the television station announced it TRT News. The challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu instead voted in Ankara, in the Cankaya district, and in any case he has already succeeded in making the leadership of the incumbent president shaky (bringing him to the ballot). “I invite all citizens to go to the polls to free us from an authoritarian regime and for the arrival of freedom and democracy,” Kilicdaroglu said at a press conference after voting. Voting operations began at 8 local time, 7 in Italy. The polling stations remained open, for the more than 64.1 million people aged 18 and over called to vote, until 5 pm, 4 pm in Italy.
Five arrest warrants for voting post
Meanwhile, the Istanbul prosecutor’s office has issued arrest warrants for five people after launching an investigation into some posts about the ballot shared on social media and deemed “provocative” and which allegedly spread “disinformation aimed at disturbing public order”. The Turkish media have announced that the accounts at the center of the investigation are the following: Haber Report, Darkweb Haber, Militer Doktrin, Muhbir and Solcu Gazete.
Erdogan takes the lead in the first round
During the first round, on May 14, the turnout was over 87% of those eligible. Erdogan finished first with 49.5% of the votes, Kilicdaroglu got almost 45% of the votes. Sinan Ogan, a right-wing nationalist politician who then decided to support the outgoing president in the runoff, finished third with just over 5% of the votes. The eve of the second round was consumed by final appeals and cross accusations. “Let’s start Turkey’s century with our votes,” Erdogan said in reference to the centenary of the Turkish Republic this year. Already in power for twenty years, in his last rally in Istanbul before the elections, the president used conciliatory tones, toning down a very harsh rhetoric chosen for the campaign in the first round, and also invited supporters of the opposing candidate to vote for him . “They are also children of our nation, I hope we will walk together”, said the outgoing president who in the polls published this week has an advantage over Kilicdaroglu, who has gathered around him a coalition of politically oriented opposition parties very different. And he can also count on the support of the Ysp Green Left Party, the third most represented force in Parliament and pro-Kurdish in orientation, which has invited its electors to vote for him.
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The recent alliances
In the last week, Erdogan managed to get the support of Sinan Ogan, a politician from the nationalist right who finished third in the first round of the presidential elections with just over 5% of the votes. In recent days, Kilicdaroglu has instead found the support of Umit Ozdag and his Zafer Partisi (the party of Victory), a right-wing nationalist formation that had supported Ogan in the first round but, when the latter declared that he sided with the president outgoing, has chosen to give his support to Kilicdaroglu. The opposition candidate has complained of limited space in most of the media for his electoral campaign and, in parallel with the calmer tones used by Erdogan in his rallies, he has veered into a very tough nationalist discourse that has been branded as populist by some analysts.
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Syrians and immigration
“The Syrians will leave” was one of the new campaign messages for Kilicdaroglu’s runoff, which promised the repatriation of all migrants in the event of an election. For him, if Erdogan wins again, millions of refugees would arrive in the country, in addition to the Syrians who fled after the 2011 conflict who already live in the country and number almost 4 million. Erdogan who in recent days has spoken of the “voluntary return” of 1 million Syrians to the areas of northern Syria controlled by Ankara, where Turkey is building reception facilities in collaboration with Qatar. The Turkish president, if re-elected, would also like to repatriate the refugees to other regions of Syria and negotiations are underway for reconciliation with President Bashar al-Assad with whom he broke off relations after the start of the conflict, even if the talks are still in the initial stage. And the normalization of relations between Ankara and Damascus remains only a prospect for now. “It’s not about racism, we just want illegal immigration to end, it’s no longer sustainable,” said Ayfer Yazkan, a militant of Kilicdaroglu’s party interviewed by theAnsa while distributing leaflets promising the repatriation of Syrians. “Among the migrants, there are members of ISIS, the Taliban, there is everything, they come from Africa and there is the risk that they can easily enter Europe”, says the woman according to whom an out-of-control situation on the Turkish border led to “15 million migrants” entering the country illegally. With consequences on the economy of Turkey, already in difficult conditions due to the policies of the current administration.
