Summary
In case you missed anything, here’s a rundown of all the latest developments from the presidential election in Turkey.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has led Turkey for 20 years, has been announced as the winner of a run-off. With 99.43% of ballot boxes opened, Erdoğan has secured 52.14% of the vote, while his opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has received 47.86%.
The run-off came after neither candidate proved able to secure more than 50% of the vote in the first round earlier this month.
Thousands of Erdoğan’s supporters have gathered on the streets of Ankara this evening to celebrate his victory.
Addressing a victory rally, Erdoğan thanked “every single one of our people who once again gave us the responsibility to govern the country five more years” and called for “unity and solidarity”.
In a brief concession statement, Kılıçdaroğlu said he felt “real sadness about the big difficulties awaiting the country”.
Rishi Sunak has phoned Erdoğan to congratulate him. A Downing Street spokesperson said the prime minister had “reiterated the strong relationship between the United Kingdom and Turkey” and that the two had “agreed to continue working closely together to address shared challenges”.
In a tweet offering his own congratulations, US President Joe Biden told Erdoğan he looked forward to “continuing to work together as Nato Allies on bilateral issues and shared global challenges”.
Other world leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have also offered their congratulations.
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Updated
Western capitals remained silent through Turkey’s presidential campaign – privately hoping Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s erratic 20-year rule would come to a surprise close – but now he has been handed a decisive mandate to serve a third term, the west is caught between fear and hope.
It fears he will exploit the result to take this Nato founder member further from the liberal secular west, but hopes against hope that, not being eligible to run again and thus freed from the need to pander to a nationalist electorate for the rest of his political life, he may at least be open to persuasion and base his foreign policy on something other than self-preservation.
Either way, the choices Erdoğan unbound makes matter not just for Turkey, Nato, and whatever order that emerges at the end of the war in Ukraine.
Read the full analysis from our diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, here:
