As of 08:00 local time (07:00 Belgian time), the second round of Presidential elections in Turkey has begun, as citizens can cast their votes for incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or his challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Erdoğan, who received 49.42% of the vote in the first round two weeks ago but did not achieve the required absolute majority, enters the second one as the favourite. Kılıçdaroğlu finished about 4.5 percentage points behind Erdogan.
Polling stations will remain open until Sunday afternoon (16:00 Belgian time). Preliminary results are expected in the evening.
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Erdoğan (69) of the conservative nationalist AK Party has now been in power for 20 years in Turkey, first as Prime Minister and then as President since 2014. The secularly oriented Kılıçdaroğlu (74) of the centre-left Republican People's Party (CHP) was put forward as a joint candidate by six opposition parties, hoping to defeat Erdoğan.
Some 61 million people have been called to vote. Voter turnout in the first round was high, 87 %. Turkish citizens in Belgium have already voted. In the first round a majority of voters in Belgium voted for the incumbent president.
The ODIHR Election Observation Mission to the 2023 elections in Turkey will hold a post-election press conference on Monday afternoon at which it will present its findings of the mission.
