Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has secured a victory with 52.17 percent of the vote in the Turkish presidential election, unofficial results reveal. Opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who garnered 47.83 percent of the vote, criticised the election as highly biased, with state resources apparently mobilised to favour Erdoğan’s party.
As Turkey’s election vote counting came to a close in the early hours of Monday morning, police raided several houses and beat detainees in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeastern province of Hakkari, and arrested at least 20 opposition supporters and a journalist in Batman.
The commander of a Turkey-trained Syrian rebel faction posed photos of himself voting in Turkey’s presidential elections on Sunday, and congratulated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s win.
The extraordinary support for Kılıçdaroğlu in Kurdish-majority areas underscores the deep frustration and discontent with the AKP government’s policies towards the Kurdish population. The crackdown on pro-Kurdish circles has galvanised Kurdish voters to rally behind Kılıçdaroğlu as a symbol of hope for change.
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