(LANKAPUVATH | COLOMBO) – World leaders have congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after he won re-election in a historic run-off that posed the biggest challenge to his 20 years in power.
Erdogan won Turkey’s presidency with 52.14 percent of the votes, said the head of the Supreme Election Council, Ahmet Yener, on Sunday, making the results official.
With 99.43 percent of ballot boxes opened, Erdogan’s rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu received 47.86 percent of votes, Yener said. With a gap of more than two million votes between candidates, the rest of the uncounted ballots will not change the result, he added.
The elections, in which more than 64 million Turks at home and abroad were entitled to vote, took place against a background of a cost-of-living crisis that saw inflation peak at 85 percent in October and earthquakes in February that killed more than 50,000 people.
Erdogan, 69, who came to power in 2003, initially as prime minister, offered a vision of further development, promising to extend the improvements made by his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.
NATO member Turkey’s longest-serving leader was tested like never before in what was widely seen as the country’s most consequential election in its 100-year history as a post-Ottoman republic.
