After months of campaigning by two dozen political parties, four presidential candidates and a bewildering lineup of electoral alliances, Turkish voters head to the polls, again, on Sunday, to make a critical choice between two men.
The first round two weeks ago saw Erdogan clinch 49.52% of the votes and Kilicdaroglu 44.88%. To win the election, a candidate must receive a simple majority of the votes.
Erdogan said that on May 28, Turkish voters would have to make “the most important choice of their lives, a decision concerning the future” of the country and its children.
Kilicdaroglu, for his part, noted that “for the first time, Turkish citizens will have to choose between two candidates and two worldviews.
Sinan Ogan, the third-placed candidate in the first round, who received 5% of the votes, announced on Monday that he was throwing his support behind Erdogan in the upcoming run-off and called on his supporters to vote for the incumbent president.
Followings are the latest updates:
Polling stations officially open across Turkey
Voting began at 8:00 am (05:00 GMT) and will close at 5:00 pm.
More than 64 million Turks are eligible to cast ballots at nearly 192,000 polling stations, including more than six million who were first-time voters on May 14.
The outcome is expected to start becoming clear by early evening.
MNA/