Polls closed in Turkey, now the counting

In Turkey, the polls have just closed, open this morning from 8, on the occasion of the run-off of the presidential elections that sees the candidate of the major opposition parties Kemal Kilicdaroglu challenge the outgoing head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The counting of the ballots now begins.

Including the number of residents abroad, there are more than 64.1 million eligible voters and all Turkish citizens who are at least 18 years old can vote. During the first round, on May 14, the turnout was over 87% of those entitled, Erdogan came first with 49.5% of the vote, Kilicdaroglu obtained almost 45% of the votes while Sinan Ogan, a right-wing nationalist politician who then decided to support the outgoing president in the runoff, came third with just over 5% of the vote.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voted in the morning, together with his wife Emine in the Uskudar neighborhood, on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. In an interview with state TV TRT after voting, he said that the conduct of today's electoral operations are important "for the life of democracy", since it is the first time that a run-off has been held in Turkey's presidential elections.

For his part, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of the opposition parties challenging Erdogan in today's runoff, voted in Ankara. "I call on all citizens to go to the polls to free us from an authoritarian regime and for the arrival of freedom and democracy," Kilicdaroglu said at a
news conference after voting.