Elections: First words are not going to be very informative

TURKEY - In Brief 14 May 2023 by Atilla Yesilada

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Contrary to my habit of spouting updates on elections in the past, I find myself utterly confused at 03:35 am Istanbul time, deadly afraid of making a mistake even in reflecting the initial results of the elections, much less starting a preliminary analysis. I’m very confident that the Republic Alliance (RA), led by AKP and MHP retained an overwhelming majority in the Grand Assembly (GA) with 322-325 seats out of 600. The presidential race will probably go to a run-off, though Erdogan has an outside chance of winning in the morning. I’ve been flipping through a dozen pro-Republic and pro-Nation Alliance (NA) TV outlets since 18:30, utterly confused about the count. The official data vendors of the High Election Council (HEC), Anadolu and ANKA agencies call the ballot count nearly complete, while the official website of HEC shows more than 3 million ballots yet to be entered to the system. Erdogan made his traditional balcony speech, but was more reserved than the past, refraining from claiming certain victory. Kilicdaroglu, with 5 party leaders of the NA in tow made a terse statement conceding that the presidential race will be concluded in the second round. As Anadolu and ANKA counts stand, Erdogan is garnering 49.3%of the vote, Kilicdaroglu roughly 45%, followed by protest candidate Sinan Ogan at 5%. I assume the tiny sliver of uncounted votes come from major cities like Istanbul, which would bar an Erdogan victory. On the other hand, votes from abroad are only counted half-way, which could perhaps catapult Erdogan over 50%. While it is too early to be definite, it is more than fair to say that Erdogan and his company outperformed expectations at every level, while K...