Erdogan wins Türkiye’s runoff

Erdogan wins Türkiye’s runoff, state media confirms!

• Recep Erdogan wins Türkiye’s elections and will remain President for 5 more years.
• This is his 11th election victory in a row. Erdogan has announced that this will be his last election.

The initial results showed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was ahead in the presidential runoff in most of Türkiye’s southern region devastated by the Feb. 6 twin earthquakes.

Sunday saw Tayyip Erdogan, 69, extending his rule into a third decade and persisting with Turkey’s muscular foreign policy and unorthodox economic governance.

According to the preliminary results, Erdoğan had been ahead in nine of 11 provinces in the quake zone, including Adıyaman, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, Şanlıurfa, Elazığ, and Hatay.

Erdogan defied opinion polls and came out comfortably ahead with an almost five-point lead over his rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the first round on May 14.

But he fell just short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff, in a race with profound consequences for Turkey itself and global geopolitics.

Following the victory, Erdogan, addressing his supporters in Istanbul, thanked “each and every member of the nation who once again conveyed to us responsibility for governing Turkey for the next five years.”

“We have completed the second round of the presidential elections with the favor of our people,” Erdogan said, expressing his gratitude to the nation.

He thanked the Turkish public for the “democracy festival” the country experienced during the election.

“God willing we will be worthy of your trust as we have been for the last 21 years,” the president said.

Erdogan added that all 85 million citizens of the country are the “victors” of the two elections on May 14 and May 28.

As reported, Erdogan’s rival Kemal Kılıçadorğlu, the leader of Türkiye’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the six-party Nation Alliance, was ahead in Adana and Diyarbakır.