Counting underway in Turkey where the outgoing president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ahead with about 54%, after 21% of the seats counted, most of which are considered Erdogan’s fiefdom areas.
Nation Alliance candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu follows at 38.56%. Ata Alliance candidate Sinan Ogan is far behind with 6.71%.
Voter turnout is very high: it is in fact between 80% and 90%, confirming the data of previous elections
“I hope that after the counting of the votes there will be benefits for Turkish democracy”, said Turkish President Erdogan, as reported by the state TV Trt, after voting in today’s elections in Turkey in the district of Uskudar, on the Anatolian shore of Istanbul. “Since morning, the electoral process has gone ahead without incident or problems,” added the Turkish leader.
“We have all lost democracy,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan, said at the time of the vote, according to whom “We all lacked democracy. We missed being together, we missed hugging each other. You will see, spring will return to this country if God wills and it will last forever.
Including the number of residents abroad, the beneficiaries totaled over 64.1 million people. Young adults who had the right to vote for the first time in their lives are 4,904,672.
The members of the parliamentary assembly, made up of 600 deputies, are chosen through a proportional system in which those entitled vote for a party, not for a candidate, and to enter parliament a political formation must exceed the threshold of 7% of the preferences or be part of an alliance that surpasses it. In these elections it will be possible to choose between 36 different parties. To become president, a candidate must instead pass the threshold of 50% of the votes otherwise there will be a second round, possibly scheduled for May 28.