President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the opposition Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu will meet in less than two weeks. The situation of the opposition is difficult.
In Turkey, the election official said in the afternoon what many already knew; the presidential election will be decided in the second round on May 28.
The fight will be fought against a sitting president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the main opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu between.
Erdoğan starts the new round from a strong position. In the first round, according to the preliminary results, he finally got 49.51 percent of the votes.
Kılıçdaroğlu, on the other hand, was left with 44.88 percent and will start a short but probably intense election campaign as the underdog.
Far-right candidate lobbying for Erdoğan?
As far as Erdoğan needs help, a candidate from the nationalist extreme right could become the kingmaker Sinan Oğan.
He received just over five percent of the vote and will be out of the second round of the election.
Oğan demands, among other things, the return of all Syrian refugees.
Kılıçdaroğlu gathered a lot of votes from the Kurdish region of Turkey and it is difficult to see how he could keep these votes if he could agree to cooperate with the pro-Turkish Oğan
Oğan has made cooperation conditional on Kılıçdaroğlu distancing himself from the pro-Kurdish green left.
Kılıçdaroğlu tries to swear faith in his troops
On the night of the election, Kılıçdaroğlu assured that he would win the second round and the leading figures of his Republican People’s Party (CHP) have said that now the new election battle starts with a clean slate.
In the afternoon, Kılıçdaroğlu tried to swear faith in his troops with a Twitter message in which he bangs on the table and assures that he will fight until the end.
Parliamentary elections a disappointment for the opposition
Turkey also held parliamentary elections on Sunday, the result of which is disappointing for the opposition, although the main opposition CHP party increased its support.
The second largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish HDP, or the Green Left under its new name, lost seats.
President Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party and its allies are getting a narrow majority of seats, even though the support of the Justice and Development Party fell.
The parliament is largely stripped of power, but it can slow down and make it difficult for the president to act.
If Kılıçdaroğlu were to surprise and become president in less than two weeks, he would be met by a parliament that tends to throw stones at carts at every turn.
But it is most likely that Erdoğan will win the second round of the presidential election and get the support of a parliament where his own party and its allies have a majority.
Will Erdoğan continue on the current line?
The big question mark is how Erdoğan plans to use his power in the future.
Will the persecution of dissidents intensify and will freedom of speech narrow even further, or will Erdoğan soften his line. There is nothing to suggest that, but journalists, university people and opposition politicians may be in for even hotter places.
However, first the second round of the elections must be won and the next two weeks can be full of surprises in Turkey.