Erdogan and his ruling AK Party claimed election victory, opposition wary

Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party claimed victory in presidential and legislative elections of Turkey. Erdogan gave a short speech in front of his supporters while the vote count was still running.

"Our people have given us the task of executing presidential and executive positions," Erdogan said in his speech as reported by Reuters on Monday (25/06/2018).

"I hope no one will try to overshadow the results and endanger democracy to hide their own failures," he continued

However, the main opposition party said it was too early to admit defeat. Erdogan's main competitor, Muharrem Ince of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has urged election monitors to remain in polling stations to ensure there is no cheating.

Because there is still a vote counting from the big cities where his party usually performs strongly. The opposition is skeptical about the accuracy of figures released by state-run Anadolu news agency. Anadolu is indeed the sole distributor of official vote counting.

A video spread across social media showed opposition supporters carrying bags full of ballots that they say have not been counted. There are about 300 people in the video.

"Thieves Tayyip!" inside the CHP party headquarters in Ankara.

Opposition parties and NGOs mobilized up to half a million monitors at polling stations to counter the possibility of electoral fraud. They said changes to election laws and fraud allegations in a referendum in 2017 raised concerns about electoral justice being held on Sunday (24/6).

In a vote cast broadcast by Turkish media, Erdogan excelled from his closest competitor Muharrem Ince. Of 96, percent of the votes, Erdogan won 52.7 percent while Ince won only 30.7 percent of the vote.

While in the legislative elections, the AK Party earned 43 percent of the vote and its ally, MHP, 11 percent. This figure is based on 98 percent of the votes counted.

In opposition, the CHP has 23 percent and the People's Democratic Party (HDP) pro-Kurdish 11 percent.

In total there are 59.39 million registered voters in this year's elections. That number includes 3.047 million voters abroad. A total of 180,065 ballot boxes have been deployed to 81 provinces in Turkey. While a total of 3,160 ballot boxes are provided in about 123 Turkish diplomatic missions in as many as 51 countries. It is estimated that pilpres and pileg is conducted by 87 percent of the population of Turkey.