Turkish President, presidential candidate for the Public Alliance, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appealed to Turks abroad, urging them to vote in the run-off for the presidential elections that begins tomorrow, Saturday, in embassies and consulates, while his rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is making efforts to win the support of candidate Sinan Ogan, who came third in the first round. .
Erdogan said – in a tweet on Twitter today, Friday – “I ask our citizens residing abroad to exercise their democratic right by closely following the election dates in the countries in which they reside.”
Voting will take place abroad from May 20 to 24, with voting taking place inside Turkey on May 28.
Erdogan believed that the Turks abroad had performed “their national duty in the best way, despite the difficulties they faced,” and continued, “I expect you to show your will strongly for the second time, and I am confident that we will pass this test as well.”
The Turkish president praised what he described as the record participation of voters abroad during the first round, and said that the expatriate Turks voted for him and the public alliance and did not give in to the pressures exerted on them by the terrorist organization, according to his description, in reference to the PKK.
After the presidential and parliamentary elections that were held last Sunday in Turkey, the Supreme Elections Authority officially announced a run-off for presidential elections, as no candidate received more than 50% of the vote.
Erdogan won 49.51% of the vote, while Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of the People’s Alliance and head of the Republican People’s Party, won 44.92%. As for Sinan Ogan, the candidate of the Grandparents Alliance, he received 5.17%.
Kilicdaroglu is seeking Ogan’s support to improve his chances in the run-off, but he is having difficulty combining the votes of the Kurdish bloc – which supported him in the first round – and the votes of the right-wing nationalists to whom Ogan belongs.
Turkish media said that Kilicdaroglu will meet today, Friday, with the leader of the Zafar party, Umit Ozdag, from the far-right movement, who is Sinan Ogan’s partner in the ancestral alliance.
Ozdag is one of the most famous advocates for the deportation of Syrian refugees from Turkey, which is also a key point in the Kılıçdaroğlu program, and he reaffirmed it with the start of the electoral campaign for the run-off.
