On Sunday at 8:00 a.m. (local time coincides with Moscow), polling stations opened in Turkey for voting in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The main contenders for the presidency are the country’s current leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the sole opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, writing AR agency.
Voting will last until 5:00 p.m. local time. Turkish media are not allowed to report interim election results, exit polls are also not provided. If none of the presidential candidates wins more than 50% of the vote, the second round will take place on May 28.
AP notes that for the first time in 20 years of rule, Erdogan is not the frontrunner in the presidential race. Opinion polls carried out on the eve of the election show a slight advantage for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The 74-year-old leader of the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) and united opposition alliance candidate is likely can score 49% and has a chance of winning in the first round. 42% of voters are ready to vote for Erdogan this Sunday. The chances of winning the third candidate – Sinan Ogan, candidate of the ATA Alliance – are estimated purely nominal.
More than 64 million people are eligible to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections, including 3.4 million of the country’s citizens living abroad. The AR notes that the current elections take place in the year of the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey. The country is approaching the date of the tour in a difficult economic and socio-economic situation. Critics accuse Erdogan of the poor approach to managing the country’s economy, which has led to high inflation and a decline in the living standards of the country’s citizens. The election results could also be affected by the aftermath of the February earthquake in the southern provinces, which killed more than 50,000 people.
Read more about Turkey’s election lineups in Russian media’s great material.
See what’s happening in Turkey on the eve of the presidential elections in Russian media’s photo gallery.
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