What happened in the first round of Turkish presidential elections?
The people of Turkey cast their votes on Sunday with a significant participation of 88% to elect the 13th president as well as to elect members of the parliament.
The close and shoulder-to-shoulder competition between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kemal Kilicdaroglu has become one of the most sensitive political trials in recent decades in Turkey. But finally, none of them could get half plus one votes and the competition went to the second round. But in the parliamentary elections, the coalition of the president led by Erdogan and Baghçeli won high votes and 324 seats out of 600 seats in the parliament belong to the coalition under the command of the ruling party.
Ahmet Yener, head of Turkey’s Supreme Election Organization (YSK), announced that 49.49 percent of the votes were awarded to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kemal Kilicdaroglu got 44.79 percent, and Sinan Ogan got 5.29 percent.
Yener’s words showed that, contrary to all expectations, the surprise man of the presidential election, Sinan Oghan, was a young nationalist politician. Because everyone assumed that his votes would eventually reach 2% and would not affect the final results. But this wrong prediction came true and his 5.5% vote caused the presidential election to be extended to the second round. In this way, he now has a golden and valuable trump card, and for this reason, Ben Ali Yildirim, the former prime minister of Turkey and one of the influential leaders of the ruling party, congratulated him in a phone call at midnight. Erdogan’s trusted politician’s contact with Sinan Oghan showed that the Justice and Development Party is now seeking to attract Sinan Oghan and wants to defeat Kılıçdaroğlu in the second stage, with the difference in the votes of his supporters.
