Turkish elections: Erdogan loses the absolute majority by counting 90% of the votes

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost the outright majority needed to avoid a second round in the presidential election, after 90% of the votes were counted in Sunday’s elections.

At 23:00 local time (20:00 GMT and 21:00 Lisbon time), the official Anadolu Agency credited Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades, with 49.94% of the vote, a figure very close to the figure ANKA reports one of the media. As a result, the opposition candidate, Social Democrat Kemal Kilicdaroglu, will gather between 44% and 45%.

A third candidate, nationalist Sinan Ogan, won 5% of the vote.

The counting of votes is still ongoing

During the counting of the ballot papers, Kilicdaroglu’s party, the Republican People’s Party, accused Anadolu Agency of not providing reliable information, and Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party was also accused of obstructing the counting, and challenged the minutes of the meeting in the areas where the opposition is present. He is the strongest.

So the opposition candidate himself asked his supporters and polling volunteers to “not give up their posts”, to make sure that the count was done correctly.

The mayor of Ankara, Social Democrat Mansur Yavas, said that when the total number of major cities is included, the opposition candidate will have an absolute majority to win the presidential election in the first round.

Erdogan criticized the CHP for releasing the results before the official announcement of the count and also asked polling station delegates not to leave while the votes were being counted.

And the President of the Republic declared that “although the elections were held in such a positive and democratic environment, the process of counting the votes is still going on, and trying to announce the results hastily means usurping the national will.”

In the legislative elections, which also took place today, the coalition formed around the Justice and Development Party, Erdogan’s Islamist party, won 50% of the vote and 325 out of 600 parliamentary seats, preserving the absolute majority it had 20 years ago. .

The CHP and its allies won 34% and 215 parliamentary seats, and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and its left-wing allies gained 60 seats when they got 82% of the vote.