Erdogan ascendant as Turkey heads for historic runoff

AFP | Istanbul

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com    

Turkey yesterday woke up to the prospect of its first presidential runoff vote after conservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confounded pollsters and his secular rival to win the first round of the country’s pivotal election.

Pre-election opinion polls had suggested Erdogan risked a first national election defeat to his main challenger’s disparate six-party alliance, in a vote seen as the most important in the Muslim-majority nation’s post-Ottoman history.

But the 69-year-old defied expectations in Sunday’s ballot and could extend his two-decade grip on power on May 28, after neither he nor Kemal Kilicdaroglu reached the 50-percent threshold for a firstround victory.

With almost all ballots counted yesterday morning, Erdogan led with 49.

42 percent of the vote to Kilicdaroglu’s 44.95 percent, according to official figures provided by state news agency Anadolu.

A nationalist third candidate, Sinan Ogan, emerged as the kingmaker after picking up five percent, but has yet to come out for either frontrunner.

Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its far-right allies were also close to an outright majority in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.