Erdogan says unclear if vote will go to runoff in Turkish election

Bloomberg News

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he has a clear lead over main rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu in elections, adding that it’s still unclear if the vote will go to a runoff.

Erdogan’s share of votes stood at 49.4% with more than 99% of the ballot boxes opened, according to state broadcaster TRT. Kilicdaroglu got 44.9% and Sinan Ogan, the third candidate in Sunday’s race, got 5.3%, TRT said. If the results hold and no candidate wins more than half of the total ballots, Turkey will be headed for a second round of voting.

The top two contestants would face each other on May 28.

Erdogan, Turkey’s longest-serving leader, has molded the NATO member into a regional power that plays a growing role from Ukraine to Syria. But increasingly erratic economic policies have left the 69-year-old incumbent vulnerable to voter resentment after an inflation crisis last year gutted household budgets.

Kilicdaroglu, 74, has the backing of the nation’s broadest-ever grouping of opposition parties. He is running on a promise to restore the rule of law, mend strained ties with the West and return to economic orthodoxy.

The world’s money managers are waiting for the election’s outcome to decide whether Turkey becomes a “buy” again. Foreign money flooded Turkey’s equity and debt markets during Erdogan’s first decade in power, but investors exited in recent years as Erdogan’s growth-at-all-costs policies debased the nation’s currency.

Erdogan told supporters in the capital Ankara that he believed he can still win in the first round with more than 99% of the ballot boxes opened. The president said he’s waiting for final ballot results but that it’s clear he has the nation’s backing.

Main opposition mayors from Ankara and Istanbul said ballot data from state-run news agency Anadolu should not be trusted. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said there were still 7.5 million outstanding votes that were yet to be fed into the system, and that much of those ballots are from opposition-dominated areas.

“Our data shows Kilicdaroglu receiving 47.7% of the votes and Erdogan 45.8%,” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas said in televised remarks.

Turkey’s state-run banks have begun intervening in the foreign-exchange market to support the lira, according to people familiar with the matter. The amounts are so far small and appear to be aimed at holding the exchange rate at around 19.65 liras per dollar, the people said, asking not to be named because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly.

“It looks like presidential elections will head for a second round of voting,” nationalist candidate Ogan said in televised comments. “Turkish nationalists, devotees of Ataturk will determine the second round,” said Ogan, referring to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Ogan refrained from throwing his weight behind any of the two main candidates, saying his alliance would make a decision later according to stances in various issues, including Erdogan’s insistence that high rates are the cause of inflation.

Over 600,000 members of the security forces are on duty for the election, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency. Soylu oversees the nation’s police and paramilitary security forces.

Security concerns are running high after the opposition accused Russia of interfering in the vote, an accusation the Kremlin denied, and Twitter said it was restricting some content inside Turkey.

Turks headed to the polls across the nation to elect a new president and members of the country’s 600-seat parliament. Among the 64 million people eligible to vote, around 5 million will be casting ballots for the first time.

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(With assistance from Firat Kozok and Ugur Yilmaz.)