Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has won another term, securing an outright majority according to official results. The elections are the first held under a new system which gives the president expansive powers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was declared the winner of presidential elections on Sunday, ushering in a new political system that dramatically expands his powers.
Erdogan won an “absolute majority” of votes, the head of the Supreme Election Council, Sadi Guven, confirmed early Monday, after the opposition cast doubt over the election results.
The snap elections called by Erdogan were the first time Turkish voters had been to the polls for parliamentary and presidential elections following an April 2017 referendum that approved changing Turkey from a parliamentary to presidential system.
The new system gives the president expansive powers that critics and the West say sound the death knell for Turkish democracy.
Victory speech
“Our people have given us the job of carrying out the presidential and executive posts,” Erdogan said on television from Istanbul before heading to Ankara to address party supporters. “I hope nobody will try to cast a shadow on the results and harm democracy in order to hide their own failure.”
With more than 95 percent of ballot boxes opened, Erdogan had secured around 53 percent of the presidential vote, enough to avoid a second round runoff, according to election results published on state media Anatolia Agency. Presidential contender Muharrem Ince of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) had 31 percent of the presidential vote.
Other Erdogan rivals, Meral Aksener of the right-wing Good Party and the imprisoned Selahattin Demirtas of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), each had around 8 percent.
Main rival Ince only conceded defeat on Monday morning, several hours after the unofficial results were published.
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