We’re going to close this blog now. Here’s a brief summary of where things stand as we await official confirmation of the result:
With nearly 99.5% of ballot boxes opened, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has received 49.4% of votes his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu 44.96%, Turkey’s elections council YSK has said.
The near-complete results mean the election will almost certainly go to a runoff, scheduled for 28 May, since neither of the two leading candidates received more than 50% of the vote.
Analysts have said it could be difficult for Kılıçdaroğlu to claw back Erdoğan’s five-point lead in the fortnight before the second round on 28 May, with the president likely to ride his stronger than forecast performance, surprise win in parliament and incumbency advantages to victory
Speaking early on Monday, Erdoğan said he would accept a runoff, and accused unnamed others of trying to “deceive the nation” by claiming they were ahead.
Kılıçdaroğlu said he too would accept a runoff, and would win it, saying: “Despite all of his lies and attacks, Erdoğan did not receive the desired outcome.”
The third candidate in the race, ultranationalist Sinan Oğan, emerged as a potential kingmaker with just over 5% of the vote.
Preliminary results from the parallel parliamentary elections showed Erdoğan’s governing coalition had secured 49.38% of the overall vote, while the opposition coalition has 35.16%, with potentially a further 10 percentage points if adding votes from the Kurdish-majority Peoples’ Democratic party or HDP (which ran under the Green Left party) and other socialist parties.
The lira fell against the dollar and euro as investors voiced disappointment that Erdogan’s era of unconventional economics does not appear to be coming to an immediate end.
Updated
Here’s a a bit of a breakdown of some of the data from the presidential race. With more than 99% of ballot boxes opened, we know Recep Tayyip Erdoğan got 49.4% of the vote in the first round and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu got 44.95%. A run-off is all but guaranteed, and many analysts think Erdoğan will win.
Kılıçdaroğlu outperformed Erdoğan in around 30 constituencies in the presidential election, primarily those in areas where the opposition candidate’s CHP party already enjoys significant popularity, such as the more liberal Aegean coast, the southern regions of the country, and Turkish Thrace in the far west.
Notably, Kılıçdaroğlu garnered a substantial share of the vote in southeast Turkey, which comprises provinces with a predominantly Kurdish population and where the left-wing Yesil Sol party secured the majority of parliamentary seats. His message definitely resonated very strongly with Kurdish voters.
Though the Kurdish vote was touted as the determining factor in this election – and the results do suggest it remains a crucial part of Kılıçdaroğlu’s electoral coalition – the opposition alliance will still need to gain more voters on the Turkish right to get Kılıçdaroğlu over 50% in a second round.
Excluding the country’s three largest cities of Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara, however, Erdoğan appears to have got a consistently larger share than Kılıçdaroğlu throughout Anatolia in a total of 51 provinces, including the cities of Bursa and Konya (where he would have expected to win).
Some of these victories have been decisive and Kahramanmaras province, which was badly hit by an earthquake earlier this year, is an indicator of that, delivering Erdoğan 70% in contrast to Kılıçdaroğlu’s 22%. Many of the leads Erdoğan gained in Anatolia appear to be quite sizeable victories, with Kılıçdaroğlu rarely getting over 30% of the vote in almost 19 of those constituencies.
Here is a visual aid provided by Anadolu Agency. The red areas were won by Kılıçdaroğlu and the orange constituencies are Erdoğan’s:
