President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been at Turkey’s helm for 20 years, is favored to win a new five-year term in the second-round runoff
, after coming just short of an outright victory in the first round on May 14.
His government vetoed Sweden’s bid to join NATO and purchased Russian missile-defense systems, which prompted the United States to oust Turkey from a U.S.-led fighter-jet project. But under Erdogan, Turkey also helped broker a crucial deal that allowed Ukrainian grain shipments and averted a global food crisis.
“I’m not happy at all with the way this country is going. Let me be clear, if this current administration continues, I don’t see good things for the future,” he said. “I see that it will end badly – this administration has to change.”“I believe that our homeland is at the peak, in a very good condition,” the 57-year-old shop owner said. “Our country’s trajectory is very good and it will continue being good.
Erdogan transformed the presidency from a largely ceremonial role to a powerful office through a narrowly won 2017 referendum that scrapped Turkey’s parliamentary system of governance. He was the first directly elected president in 2014, and won the 2018 election that ushered in the executive presidency.Kilicdaroglu is a soft-mannered former civil servant who has led the pro-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP, since 2010.
Erdogan’s AKP party and its allies retained a majority of seats in parliament following a legislative election that was also held on May 14. Parliamentary elections will not be repeated Sunday.
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