Erdoğan Wins Five More Years in Power

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has won five more years in power following a tight run-off election on May 28. As the following chart shows, Erdoğan pulled in 52.2 percent of the vote, while opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu received 47.8 percent - a ratio that speaks to the level of polarization within the country.

Kılıçdaroğlu had been running slightly ahead in the opinion polls earlier in the month, but when it came to the first round of voting dropped behind, receiving 44.5 percent versus Erdoğan’s 49.5 percent. With none of the candidates reaching the required 50 percent benchmark for an outright win, a second election round took place on Sunday. In the interim, candidate Sinan Oğan, who came third in the first election round, declared his support for Erdoğan, stating that “it is important that the newly elected president is under the same [leadership] as the parliament.”

In the parliamentary elections, which ran alongside the presidential elections, Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) received 35.6 percent of votes. While this was the biggest share of votes of any party, it also represented a loss of around 6.9 percentage points compared to the 2018 election. Meanwhile, the left-wing Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) won 25.3 percent of the vote (an increase of around 2.7 percentage points compared to 2018) and the green Yeşil Sol Parti (YSP) entered parliament for the first time with 8.8 percent.

International observers have criticized the election for being heavily influenced by local media bias and ongoing restrictions to freedom of expression which has "created an unlevel playing field, and contributed to an unjustified advantage" for Erdoğan.