Ince, who belongs to the secular Republican People’s Party, drew hundreds of thousands of supporters in Izmir on the Aegean coast on Wednesday.
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Supporters of the AK Party in both Turkey and overseas late on Sunday took to the streets to celebrate the victory of their party and leader.
In his victory speech on Sunday, Erdogan asserted that his government would “rush” to deliver on his campaign promises. Supporters waving both AK Party and Turkish flags.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoyed his 181 hours of airtime during the election campaign.
The existence of a vibrant political culture and strong opposition to the political monopoly of the country’s long-term ruler were what separated Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey from Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation.
Celebrations centered on Chaussee de Haecht Street, known as a Turkish district in the Belgian capital.
Turkey really does seem to be on its way to becoming one of those autocracies like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan or Belarus, which congratulated Erdogan on the evening of the election even before all the votes had been counted.
With the polls officially closed, electoral committees across the country’s 81 provinces started counting the ballots in 180,065 polling stations across the country.
Erdogan, during a victory address, thanked voters who gave him “executive power and gave us [the People’s Alliance] legislative power in the elections”.
More than 56 million people were registered to vote at 180,000 ballot boxes across Turkey. The top priority for President Erdogan now is to restore the confidence of the global community in Turkey’s economy.
Following the election, and a constitutional referendum a year ago which takes full effect now, Erdogan, who describes himself as a moderate Islamist, has become Turkey’s first executive president; he will preside over the official transition to a presidential republic.
High security is in place across the country, with 38,480 police officers on duty in Istanbul alone.
Erdogan cast his vote at a school in Istanbul’s Uskudar with his wife, Emine. The ruling AKP shamelessly used every means at the state’s disposal to support their election campaign – for Erdogan, party, government and state have always been one and the same.
The Cabinet composition, when it is finalized, is likely to show a change of image on the AKP side, which is aware of its under-performance in the parliamentary polls where it failed to get the simple majority in the Parliament, taking only 43 percent.
President Erdoğan called early snap elections in April hoping to preempt worsening economic trends and to catch the opposition by surprise. The AKP’s decision to bring forward the vote, previously scheduled for November 2019, was perhaps the biggest indication of unease among AKP cadres about the future.
Bahceli had been a staunch critic of Erdogan and in the 2014 presidential elections backed a joint opposition candidate against him with the CHP. His closest rival Muharrem Ince was on 31%.
“Ince’s wit, audacity, ability to poke holes through Erdogan’s narrative and connect with Turks beyond the traditional base of his secularist CHP has flustered Erdogan and his team”, said Anthony Skinner, head of MENA at Verisk Maplecroft.
“Despite these conditions of imbalances, we once again exceeded the mandatory threshold of 10% to enter the parliament and also obtained more votes compared to previous elections, with subsequently passing from 59 to 68 the number of our deputies”.
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Some 1.49 million expatriates voted in a 13-day period between June 7-19 at 123 Turkish missions overseas. In a moment when Turkey needs to foster its economic ties with the West and attract Western investors, the management of this tension between foreign policy alignments and economic needs could be critical.
