Major elections in Türkiye today with results starting to roll in. Pretty important one here with worldwide implications as the opposition party attempts to end Erdoğan’s 20-year autocratic rule.
Kilicdaroglu currently holding on as the betting favorite
I have had the same fear of course, but most of the Turkish I have spoke with do have faith in the voting process. More of a concern that negative results could be contested by Erdogan as rigged or invalid… yeah that sounds familiar.
My fiancé is Turkish so basing this mostly off what I’ve heard from her family and friends.
Best hope seems to be that the opposition has been consistently saying the numbers reported by Anadolu Agency are inaccurate and their own counts are more favorable.
The official count of votes is still only 69% and I dont believe those numbers are public yet.
Then the only remaining x-factor will be who Ogan endorses. I think it’s more likely to be Erdogan, but that might not be totally cut and dry, given the opposition party is quite nationalistic and anti-immigration themselves currently, which seem to have been his main campaign points.
Betting markets holding at ~66-33 also provide some hope that maybe there are still some surprises in store here.
Latest update from Al-Jazeera feed:
Kilicdaroglu: Our rival is ‘blocking the will of Turkey’
Kemal Kilicdaroglu has said that the Erdogan camp keeps objecting to the results from certain ballot boxes to block the system.
“There are ballot boxes that have been objected to six times, 11 times,” he said, adding: “You are blocking the will of Turkey.”
Kilicdaroglu said: “You cannot prevent what will happen through objections. We will not allow a fait accompli.”
He urged Erdogan to stop “perception management” and the national election board to act responsibly.
Twitter is feeding me zero information about the election in Turkey, not sure if that’s an Elon thing or not, usually it’s been a good news aggregator for international stuff.
With 55 percent of votes counted, the lead is still for Erdogan with 55 percent of votes, while Kilicdaroglu has obtained 44 percent of votes.
Seda Demiralp, professor of political science at Isik University in Istanbul told Al Jazeera that a closing of the gap can be expected in the coming hours.
“The gap is low, lower than expected, considering it’s [according to state news agency] Anadolu Agency, and also there are other sources that give more knife-edge results. I would say this is a more optimistic scenario to the opposition, because many were fearing in the opposition that Erdogan would win with a landslide victory [but this suggests it’s not going to happen],” Demirap said.
“It looks like the gap can be closed in the upcoming hours. That’s what we daw in the previous round, that’s what we saw in 2018 elections. Typically we see Anadolu Agency starting incumbent votes with a much higher rate and the margin closes over the next hours. So, we may expect a similar change and a closing of the gap.”
