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ISTANBUL: Polling stations opened Sunday in Turkiye first-ever runoff election, where conservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the firm favorite to extend his two decades of Islamic-rooted rule to 2028.
Voting began at 8:00 am (0500 GMT) and will close at 5:00 pm. Erdogan won the first round on May 14 but fell just short of an outright majority against his secular challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Erdogan is going head-to-head with opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a 74-year-old bureaucrat and leader of the left-leaning CHP. In the first round of voting on May 14, Erdogan secured a nearly five-point lead over Kilicdaroglu but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to win.
The president’s parliamentary bloc won a majority of seats in the parliamentary race on the same day.
Last week, third-place candidate Sinan Ogan, who won 5% of the first-round vote, publicly endorsed Erdogan, further boosting the strongman leader’s chances of winning Sunday’s second and final presidential round.
Many polls had incorrectly predicted that Kilicdaroglu would lead in the May 14 vote, which saw a high turnout of nearly 90% across the country.