The results of last week's Turkish election runoff came in sooner than anticipated. By 7pm in Istanbul (4pm GMT), it was clear that incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had won another term in office with a little over 52 percent of the vote.
Türkiye Voted | Domestic and International Implications
President Erdoğan has received 52.18% of the vote, while his rival Kılıçdaroğlu received 47.82%. Thus, President Erdoğan has won over 10 elections – including presidential elections, parliamentarian elections, local elections and referendums – that he entered since 2002. This is a record-high number in the history of modern Türkiye, which made Erdoğan the longest-serving statesman in the history of the Turkish Republic.
Turkish foreign policy is faced with the task of preserving the gains it has made in various critical issues, from Libya to Azerbaijan, Ukraine to the Eastern Mediterranean, while improving economic relations with Europe, increasing effectiveness within NATO, and managing the impacts of global power shifts.
Before the first-round election on May 14, many people supposed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s long-standing winning streak would be broken. This belief was fueled by high inflation and the devastating earthquakes that had occurred just three months before the elections. Nonetheless, the outcomes of the first-round election contradicted the predictions of almost all polls, leading to historic results that surprised many.