Turkish election victory for Erdogan leaves nation divided

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s supporters are celebrating after Turkey’s long-time president won Sunday’s vote, securing another five years in power.

“The entire nation of 85 million won,” he told cheering crowds outside his enormous palace on the edge of Ankara.

But his call for unity sounded hollow as he ridiculed his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu – and took aim at a jailed Kurdish leader and the LGBT community. The opposition leader denounced “the most unfair election in recent years”. Kilicdaroglu said the president’s political party had mobilised all the means of the state against him and he did not explicitly admit defeat.

International observers said on Monday that, as with the first round on 14 May, media bias and limits to freedom of expression had created an un-level playing field  and contributed to an unjustified advantage” for Erdogan.

President Erdogan ended with just over 52% of the vote, based on near-complete unofficial results. Almost half the electorate in this deeply polarised country did not back his authoritarian vision of Turkey.

Ultimately,  Kilicdaroglu was no match for the well-drilled Erdogan campaign, even if he took the president to a run-off second round for the first time since the post was made directly elected in 2014. But he barely dented his rival’s first-round lead, falling more than two million votes behind.

(BBC)