The controversial tycoon, visiting one of his golf resorts in Scotland, said of Leave campaign’s victory: “Basically, they took back their country”.
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“Scotland does now face that prospect”, Sturgeon said.
“If (Scotland’s) Parliament judges that a second (independence) referendum is the only way to protect our place in Europe, it must have the option to hold one within that timescale”, Ms Sturgeon said.
The UK as a whole voted by 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the EU.
Thursday’s referendum has also triggered disquiet in Northern Ireland, another United Kingdom region to vote in favor of European Union membership but which now faces the prospect of leaving the bloc.
Sturgeon now says a second referendum for Scottish independence is “highly likely”.
“It could be that in the panic that ensues after a British exit, some people might want to stick with what we still have”, said a lawmaker from the SNP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Scottish Daily Express says Scotland is facing “fresh constitutional chaos” after David Cameron quit in the wake of the Leave victory.
“I think an independence referendum is now highly likely”, she added.
Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party was elected on a platform that vowed, in part, to revisit the independence issue – last decided in a failed 2014 referendum – should the country be “taken out of the European Union against our will”, Sturgeon said.
Pro-independence “Yes” supporters ahead of Scotland’s 2014 referendum.
Despite Sturgeon’s declared zeal for another referendum, Professor Michael Keating, the chair in Scottish politics at Aberdeen University, said the SNP would play it canny.
That could give the British government scope for avoiding a second Scottish independence referendum.
Former Labour first minister Henry McLeish said the debate over Scotland’s future had ” massively changed overnight”.
The SNP leader said a re-run of the 2014 vote on leaving the United Kingdom is “highly likely”.
As it became clear the result was in favour of leaving the European Union, the value of the pound went into freefall.
Ms Sturgeon, who addressed the media at her official residence, Bute House in Edinburgh, said: “The re are many people who voted against independence in 2014 who are today reassessing their decision, indeed a very large number of them have contacted me already”.
She discussed the UK’s vote to leave the European Union with Ms Sturgeon on Friday afternoon.
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Following the announcement of the final result, David Cameron announced that he would resign as Prime Minister, saying that he is not the right person to lead the United Kingdom in its Article 50 negotiations to leave Europe.
