ANKARA (AFP) – Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday he was prepared to enter a runoff against his secular rival if final results from the country’s knife-edge election showed no clear winner.
Figures from the Anadolu state news agency showed the 69-year-old conservative leader had 49.4 per cent of the vote, while his secular rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu trailed with 44.9 per cent, with just over 96 per cent of the ballots counted.
One of the candidates needed to break the 50 per cent threshold to avoid Turkiye going to its first election runoff in the post-Ottoman republic’s 100-year history.
Erdogan appeared before a sea of supporters early Monday to proclaim he had a “clear lead” but would wait for the final result.
