As the tallying of votes comes to an end, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a statement on Sunday evening at the presidential office in İstanbul, announcing a win for himself and a majority for the Public Alliance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, Erdoğan garnered almost 52.6 percent of the vote, while his rivals Muharrem İnce received 30.75 percent; Selahattin Demirtaş, 8 percent; Meral Akşener, 7.4 percent; Temel Karamollaoğlu, 0.9 percent; and Doğu Perinçek, 0.2 percent.
In the parliamentary elections, the Public Alliance took 53.69 percent of the vote, and the Nation Alliance, including the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the İYİ (Good) Party and the Felicity Party (SP), received 34.12 percent.
With these results, the AKP will have 293 seats in parliament, while the CHP will have 146, the MHP 49 and the İYİ Party 46.
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) surpassed the election threshold by garnering 11.19 percent of the vote, giving the pro-Kurdish party 66 seats in parliament.
President Erdoğan warned the opposition to avoid casting a shadow over the election results by raising concerns of fraud; however, the opposition was still awaiting the final results at the time of writing, which will be different from what Anadolu has announced.
He will be the first elected president under a new system of governance, an executive presidency that was narrowly passed in a referendum last year.
“Our need for reform will never end,” Erdoğan said during his speech, adding that parliament will pass regulations to adapt to the new system.
The Fair Election (Adil Seçim) website, an alternative to Anadolu, also showed Erdoğan in the lead at 52 percent, with 74.6 percent of the votes counted.