As he celebrated a victory set to cement his rule for a quarter of a century, Recep Tayyip Erdogan told crowds of supporters on Sunday evening that it was time to “put the disputes and conflicts of the election period to one side and unite around our national goals".
"The winner is our democracy," Erdogan told cheering backers at his presidential palace in Ankara.
Earlier, he had taken aim at opposition leaders including Kemal Kilicdaroglu and jailed Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, as well as at the LGBTQ+ community.
According to unofficial results published by state news agency Anadolu, the incumbent president and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 52.18 percent of the vote in Sunday's election, which marked the first time ever that Turkish voters had returned to the ballot box in a presidential runoff.
His opponent Kilicdaroglu of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) received nearly 48.82 percent – falling behind by just over two million voters.
More than 53.8 million turned up at the ballot boxes on 28 May, a turnout of 84 percent. Turnout is usually high in Turkey, and this round saw a drop in participation compared to 14 May - when 87 percent of Turkish citizens cast ballots in the first round of the election to elect members of parliament and the president.
The two main candidates, Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu, fell short of reaching the required 50 percent in the first round, which saw Erdogan lead with 49.5 percent against Kilicdaroglu's 44.9.
A third candidate, the nationalist, anti-migrant Sinan Ogan, absorbed the remaining 5.2 percent of votes, galvanising a 'protest' electorate as an independent candidate at the helm of an alliance of far-right parties that failed to gain any parliamentary seats. Erdogan's People's Alliance won a majority of seats in parliament.
In a speech at the headquarters of his Republican People's Party (CHP), opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu called the election “the most unfair” in recent years.
“The means of the state were laid at the feet of one man,” Kilicdaroglu said, referring to Erdogan's control of most of the mainstream media and state resources, which he made use of during the campaign by announcing a 45 percent wage hike for public workers just a few days ahead of the polls.
International observers from the Organisation for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have similarly noted that while Turkey's election was “competitive” and provided “genuine political alternatives”, it was also marred by an unlevel playing field that gave the ruling coalition an “unjustified advantage”.
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“Even reaching this number of votes with a principled and moral election campaign against a huge operation that has taken over the state is considered a miracle,” Demirtas wrote on Twitter after the vote.
His pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest in parliament, had thrown its support behind Kilicdaroglu despite not being part of the main opposition alliance. Amid an ongoing closure case over alleged links to Kurdish militants, which it denies, the HDP has run the election under the banner of the Yesil Sol (Green Left) party.
'Poaching' opposition MPs ahead of local elections
“The local election is next, and that is quite an important moment in Turkey,” Asli Aksoy, deputy head of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) told The New Arab. Currently, opposition parties govern some of Turkey's main cities including its capital Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir, which they won in 2019.
The results of that local election had raised hopes that an unprecedented alliance of six parties led by Kilicdaroglu, known as the Nation Alliance, could prevail in their common goal to unseat Erdogan and restore the country to a parliamentary democracy.
"48 percent is a clear margin, but it's not a huge margin," Aksoy added. "They now have to stay alert and work further. They know that they have to stay together in order to win any election against the ruling AKP."
A deep economic crisis and a devastating earthquake earlier this year largely failed to siphon voters to the opposition. Ruling party voters in the earthquake zone tend to blame building contractors for the scale of the disaster, as often highlighted by government media, or direct their anger at local administrations.
According to Soli Ozel, a lecturer in the international relations department of Kadir Has University in Istanbul, the opposition should not hide behind the uneven playing field and unfair campaign conditions and instead take stock of what happened.
“I think the failure goes beyond those issues, so they need to have an honest self-critique and then move on,” he told The New Arab.
“The big question is whether or not the two main partners in [the Nation Alliance] will be able to stay together,” he added, referring to the CHP and the IYI (Good) party. “Both have party congresses. We'll see in what way they will change, if they will change at all.”
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Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says Erdogan's strategy will be to “poach” opposition MPs.
“The opposition's instinct will be to stay united, Erdogan's instinct will be to divide them so that he can also win the 2024 local elections,” Cagaptay told The New Arab.
“There are a number of right-wing deputies in the opposition bloc, the IYI party itself, and some right-wing parties that ran under Kilicdaroglu,” he said.
“Erdogan's game plan in my view will be to try to create new culture wars. To that end, he could trigger a constitutional referendum. He could, for example, ban LGBTQ,” he argued.
“He has just over 320 deputies and he needs 360 to trigger a referendum.”
Ylenia Gostoli is a reporter currently based in Istanbul, Turkey. She has covered politics, social change, and conflict across the Middle East and Europe. Her work on refugees, migration and human trafficking has won awards and grants
Follow her on Twitter: @YleniaGostoli