Expats start voting in Turkey election run-off
The Turkish diaspora has begun voting in Turkey’s presidential round between incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, seeking to end Erdogan’s two-decade rule.
Images and photos from polling stations around the world on Saturday appeared to show large numbers of people queuing to vote.
The second round of voting will take place domestically on May 28 after Erdogan fell just short of the 50 percent threshold needed to win the May 14 presidential election outright in what had been interpreted as his biggest political challenge.
About 3.4 million Turks abroad are eligible to vote, or about 5 percent of the total number of votes.
Diaspora voting had a marked impact on the outcome of the first round of the presidential election, with each politician retaining strongholds in Europe, home to more than five million people of Turkish descent.
In Germany, which is home to the largest diaspora population and 1.5 million eligible voters, Erdogan was ahead with 65 percent of the vote.
However, results across Europe were polarised, with Kilicdaroglu dominating in the United Kingdom, Southern and Eastern Europe, including the Balkans, Finland and Sweden.
Newer communities of Turkish immigrants in Poland and Estonia voted overwhelmingly for the opposition at 85 and 91 percent respectively.
The Turkish government has asked for 26 polling stations to be set up in consulates and other locations in Germany, hoping to make voting easier for Turkish citizens here; Germany approved 16.
The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) spent six months convincing indecisive voters and mobilizing those who had not voted in the past.
“Wherever you are in the world, going to the polls in this election is a national duty,” Kilicdaroglu said in a video posted to his Twitter feed.
Meanwhile, Erdogan posters hung in the southern city of Nuremberg late last month, sparking controversy among local German politicians.
Public discourse and the multilevel decision
Serap Güler, a German MP of Turkish descent, said the narrow election result represented a failure for Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
“He has the entire state and the media apparatus behind him,” she said.
“This was not a fair election, but one with unequal resources – nevertheless it must go to a second round. A real loss of face for him.”
Voice observer Onur Can Varoglu told Euronews last week: “Turkish politics is like football, you are born with your team and will support it anyway.”
“It doesn’t matter if you come to Europe. If you come from a nationalistic, Islamic background or are a more pro-European immigrant, you bring these values with you,” he said, suggesting that family values were ultimately what caused how Turks voted.
Attention now turns to nationalist Sinan Ogan, the candidate who came third with 5.17 percent support. Any decision by him to support either of the two candidates in the second round could prove decisive.
Ogan told Reuters news agency he would support Kilicdaroglu in the second round “if he agrees not to make concessions to a pro-Kurdish party”.
But moving away from the Kurdish vote would be disastrous for Kilicdaroglu, who won heavily in Kurd-dominated cities.
Kilicdaroglu and Binali Yildirim of the AK Party, a former prime minister, reportedly made a phone call with Ogan after the vote.
Ultra-nationalist politicians – present in the government and opposition alliances, as well as among independents – have made the expulsion of the country’s nearly four million Syrian refugees their main demand.