ANKARA - Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan was leading his presidential challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu with 56.4 per cent support in the election run-off on Sunday.

That lead was based on initial results with 35.8 per cent of the ballot boxes opened, according to broadcaster NTV. 

The gap between the two candidates is expected to narrow as more and larger ballot boxes are opened in cities. 

Separately, opposition broadcaster HalkTV showed Mr Kilicdaroglu leading with 51.04 per cent of the votes, with about 48 per cent of the ballot boxes opened, based on separate data.

Voters went to the polls on Sunday in a historic presidential run-off election that could see Mr Erdogan extend his rule into a third decade.

He is expected to persist with Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian path, muscular foreign policy and unorthodox economic governance.

Polls closed at 5pm local time (10pm Singapore time) after opening at 8am.

The vote was said to be one of Turkey’s most important elections in its 100-year history as a post-Ottoman state.

Polling stations were reportedly quieter in many places than two weeks ago, when the turnout was 89 per cent.

Mr Erdogan, 69, defied opinion polls and came out comfortably ahead with an almost five-point lead over Mr Kilicdaroglu in the first round on May 14.

But he fell just short of the 50 per cent needed to avoid a run-off, in a race with profound consequences for Turkey itself and global geopolitics.

Mr Erdogan’s unexpectedly strong showing – amid a deep cost-of-living crisis and a win in parliamentary elections for a coalition of his conservative Islamist-rooted AK Party, the nationalist MHP and others – buoyed the veteran campaigner, who says a vote for him is a vote for stability.

After voting with his wife Emine in Istanbul, Mr Erdogan called on voters “to turn out without complacency”. Mr Kilicdaroglu, meanwhile, urged voters to “get rid of this authoritarian regime”.

The election will decide not only who leads Turkey, but also how it is governed, where its economy is headed after its currency plunged to one-tenth of its value against the US dollar in a decade, and the shape of its foreign policy, which has seen Turkey irk the West by cultivating ties with Russia and the Gulf states.

Turkey is a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member country of 85 million people. 

In the city of Diyarbakir in the mainly Kurdish south-east, retiree Faruk Gecgel, 54, said he voted for Mr Erdogan as he did two weeks ago.

“It is important for Turkey’s future that the President and Parliament, where he has a majority, work together under the same roof. So I voted for Erdogan again for stability,” he said.

Housewife Canan Tince, 34, said she voted for Mr Kilicdaroglu, who on May 14 received nearly 72 per cent support in the city – a stronghold of the main pro-Kurdish opposition party.

“Enough is enough. Change is essential to overcome the economic crisis and problems that Turkey faces, so I voted for Kilicdaroglu again. We are hopeful and determined,” she said.

Mr Kilicdaroglu, 74, is the candidate of a six-party opposition alliance, and leads the Republican People’s Party created by Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

His camp has struggled to regain momentum after the shock of trailing Mr Erdogan in the first round.

The initial election showed larger-than-expected support for nationalism.

It is a powerful force in Turkish politics, which has been hardened by years of hostilities with Kurdish militants, an attempted coup in 2016, and the influx of millions of refugees from Syria since war began there in 2011.

Turkey is the world’s largest host of refugees. There are some five million migrants in the country, of whom 3.3 million are Syrians, according to Interior Ministry data.

Third-place presidential candidate and hardline nationalist Sinan Ogan said he endorsed Mr Erdogan based on a principle of “non-stop struggle (against) terrorism”, referring to pro-Kurdish groups. He achieved 5.17 per cent of the May 14 vote.

Another nationalist, Mr Umit Ozdag, leader of the anti-immigrant Victory Party (ZP), announced a deal declaring ZP’s support for Mr Kilicdaroglu, after he said he would repatriate immigrants.

ZP won 2.2 per cent of the votes in May’s parliamentary election.

A closely watched survey by pollster Konda for the run-off had put support for Mr Erdogan at 52.7 per cent and Mr Kilicdaroglu at 47.3 per cent, after distributing undecided voters.

The survey was carried out from May 20 to 21, before Mr Ogan and Mr Ozdag revealed their endorsements.

Another key factor was how Turkey’s Kurds, at about a fifth of the population, would vote.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party endorsed Mr Kilicdaroglu in the first round.

But after his lurch to the right to win nationalist votes, it did not explicitly name him and instead urged voters to reject Mr Erdogan’s “one-man regime” in the run-off.

‘More Erdogan’

The President has pulled out all the stops on the campaign trail as he battled to survive his toughest political test.

He commands fierce loyalty from pious Turks who once felt disenfranchised in secular Turkey, and his political career has survived the failed coup and corruption scandals.

Dr Nicholas Danforth, a Turkey historian and non-resident fellow at think-tank Eliamep, said: “Turkey has a longstanding democratic tradition and a longstanding nationalist tradition, and right now, it’s clearly the nationalist one that’s winning out. Erdogan has fused religious and national pride, offering voters an aggressive anti-elitism.

“More Erdogan means more Erdogan. People know who he is and what his vision for the country is, and it seems a lot of them approve.”

Mr Erdogan has taken tight control of most of Turkey’s institutions, and sidelined liberals and critics.

Human Rights Watch, in its World Report 2022, said his government has set back Turkey’s human rights record by decades.

However, if Turks do oust Mr Erdogan, it will be largely because they saw their prosperity, equality and ability to meet basic needs decline, with inflation that topped 85 per cent in October 2022.

Mr Kilicdaroglu, a former civil servant, has pledged to roll back much of Mr Erdogan’s sweeping changes to Turkish domestic, foreign and economic policies.

He would also revert to the parliamentary system of governance, from Mr Erdogan’s executive presidential system, narrowly passed in a referendum in 2017. REUTERS