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By Paul Kirby & Ece Goksedef
In Ankara
Recep Tayyip Erdogan's supporters are celebrating after Turkey's long-time president won Sunday's vote, securing another five years in power.
"The entire nation of 85 million won," he told cheering crowds outside his enormous palace on the edge of Ankara.
But his call for unity sounded hollow as he ridiculed his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu - and took aim at a jailed Kurdish leader and the LGBT community.
The opposition leader denounced "the most unfair election in recent years".
Mr Kilicdaroglu said the president's political party had mobilised all the means of the state against him and he did not explicitly admit defeat.
President Erdogan ended with just over 52% of the vote, based on near-complete unofficial results. Almost half the electorate in this deeply polarised country did not back his authoritarian vision of Turkey.
Ultimately, Mr Kilicdaroglu was no match for the well-drilled Erdogan campaign, even if he took the president to a run-off second round for the first time since the post was made directly elected in 2014.
But he barely dented his rival's first-round lead, falling more than two million votes behind.
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The president made the most of his victory, with an initial speech to supporters atop a bus in Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul, followed after dark by a balcony address from his palace to an adoring crowd that he numbered at 320,000 people.
"It is not just us who won, Turkey won," he declared, calling it one of the most important elections in Turkish history.
He taunted his opponent's defeat with the words "Bye, bye, Kemal" - a chant that was also taken up by his supporters in Ankara.
Mr Erdogan poured scorn on the main opposition party's increase in its number of MPs in the parliamentary vote two weeks earlier. The true number had fallen to 129, he said, because the party had handed over dozens of seats to its allies.
He also condemned the opposition alliance's pro-LGBT policies, which he said were in contrast with his own focus on families.
The run-up to the vote had become increasingly rancorous and in one incident late on Sunday, an opposition Good party official was fatally stabbed in front of a party office in the northern coastal town of Ordu.
The motive for Erhan Kurt's killing was not clear, but a leading opposition official blamed youths celebrating the election result.
Although the final results were not confirmed, the Supreme Election Council said there was no doubt who had won.
It is highly unusual for the palace complex to be opened to the public - but so was this result, extending his period in power to a quarter of a century.
Supporters came from all over Ankara to taste the victory. There were Islamic chants, while some laid Turkish flags on the grass to pray.
For a night, Turkey's economic crisis was forgotten. One supporter, Seyhan, said it was all a lie: "Nobody is hungry. We are very happy with his economy policies. He will do even better in the next five years."
But the president admitted that tackling inflation was Turkey's most urgent issue.
The question is whether he is prepared to take the necessary measures to do so. At an annual rate of almost 44%, inflation seeps into everyone's lives.
The cost of food, rent and other everyday goods has soared, exacerbated by Mr Erdogan's refusal to observe orthodox economic policy and raise interest rates.
The Turkish lira has hit record lows against the dollar and the central bank has struggled to meet surging demand for foreign currency.
"If they continue with low interest rates, as Erdogan has signalled, the only other option is stricter capital controls," warns Selva Demiralp, professor of economics at Koc university in Istanbul.
Economics was far from the minds of Erdogan supporters, who spoke of their pride at his powerful position in the world and his hard line on fighting "terrorists", by which they meant Kurdish militants.
President Erdogan has accused his opposite number of siding with terrorists, and criticised him for promising to free a former co-leader of Turkey's second largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish HDP.
Selahattin Demirtas has been languishing in jail since 2016, despite the European Court of Human Rights ordering his release.
Mr Erdogan said while he was in power, Mr Demirtas would stay behind bars.
He also promised to prioritise rebuilding in areas hit by February's twin earthquakes and bring about the "voluntary" return of a million Syrian refugees.
Crowds flocked to Istanbul's Taksim Square, with many coming from the Middle East and the Gulf.
NECATI SAVAS/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
Palestinians from Jordan wrapped Turkish flags around their shoulders. A Tunisian visitor, Alaa Nassar, said Mr Erdogan had not just made improvements to his own country, "he is also supporting Arabs and the Muslim world".
For all the celebrations, the idea of unity in this polarised country seems farther away than ever.
Since a failed coup in 2016, Mr Erdogan has abolished the post of prime minister and amassed extensive powers, which his opponent had pledged to roll back.
One voter outside an Ankara polling station on Sunday said he wanted to see an end to the brain drain that began with the post-coup purge. There is a risk that it may now intensify.
Turkey's defeated opposition will now have to regroup ahead of local elections in 2024.
YASIN AKGUL/AFP
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a high-profile favourite among opposition supporters, appealed to them not to despair and said it was time for change.
His video message on social media was immediately seen as a veiled hint that the opposition needed a new leader.
He reminded them on Monday that he had won in Istanbul and another opposition figure had won in Ankara in 2019, only nine months after their previous presidential election defeat.
"We will never expect different results by doing the same things," he said.
Additional reporting from Istanbul by Cagil Kasapoglu.
Turks are voting in a momentous presidential run-off to decide whether or not Recep Tayyip Erdogan should remain in power after 20 years.
His challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, backed by a broad opposition alliance, called on voters to come out and "get rid of an authoritarian regime".
The president, who is favourite to win, promises a new era uniting the country around a "Turkish century".
But the more pressing issue is rampant inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.
Voters have nine hours to cast their ballots before 17:00 (14:00 GMT) and many were already waiting outside a polling station in central Ankara before the doors opened. One woman of 80 had set her alarm for 05:00 to be sure of arriving on time.
Turnout in the first round was an impressive 88.8%, and Mr Erdogan's lead was 2.5 million votes. That is why both candidates have their eye on the eight million who did not vote - but could this time.
Ahead of the run-off Mr Kilicdaroglu accused his rival of foul play, by blocking his text messages to voters while the president's messages went through. After voting in Ankara he urged Turks to protect the ballot boxes.
Opposition parties are deploying an army of some 400,000 volunteers in a bid to ensure no vote-rigging takes place, both at polling stations and later at the election authority. But among the volunteers, they need lawyers such as Sena to accompany the ballot boxes.
BBC
My parents say we used to trust the results and we didn't need any volunteers. It's bad that we don't trust the state, but the state can only change if people force it to
International observers spoke of an uneven playing field after the first round. But there was no suggestion that any irregularities in voting would have changed the result.
As he voted in Istanbul, President Erdogan said Turkish democracy was going through a second round in a presidential election for the first time and suggested Turks should make use of it.
Mr Kilicdaroglu promised a very different style of presidency on his final day of campaigning: "I have no interest in living in palaces. I will live like you, modestly... and solve your problems."
Burak Kara/Getty Images)
It was a swipe at Mr Erdogan's enormous palatial complex on the edge of Ankara which he moved to when he switched from prime minister to president in 2014. After surviving a failed coup in 2016 he took on extensive powers, detained tens of thousands of people and took control of the media.
So it was laden with symbolism when he paid a campaign visit on Saturday to the mausoleum of a prime minister executed by the military after a coup in 1960.
"The era of coups and juntas is over," he declared, linking Turkey's current stability to his own authoritarian rule.
MURAD SEZER/POOL/AFP
Turkey, however, is deeply polarised, with the president reliant on a support base of religious conservatives and nationalists, while his opposite number's supporters are mainly secular - but many of them are nationalist too.
For days the two men traded insults. Mr Kilicdaroglu accused the president of cowardice and hiding from a fair election; Mr Erdogan said his rival was on the side of "terrorists", referring to Kurdish militants.
But after days of inflammatory rhetoric about sending millions of Syrian refugees home, the opposition candidate returned to Turkey's number-one issue - the economic crisis, and in particular its effect on poorer households.
A 59-year-old woman and her grandson joined him on stage to explain how her monthly salary of 5,000 lira (£200; $250) was now impossible to live on as her rent had shot up to 4,000 lira (£160; $200).
It may have been staged, but this is the story across Turkey, with inflation at almost 44% and salaries and state help failing to keep pace.
Economists say the Erdogan policy of cutting interest rates rather than raising them has only made matters worse.
The Turkish lira has hit record lows, demand for foreign currency has surged and the central bank's net foreign currency reserves are in negative territory for the first time since 2002.
"The central bank has no foreign currency to sell," says Selva Demiralp, professor of economics at Koc University. "There are already some sort of capital controls - we all know it's hard to buy dollars. If they continue with low interest rates, as Erdogan has signalled, the only other option is stricter controls."
East of Ankara, gleaming tower blocks have been springing up in Kirikkale. It looks like boom-time for this city, run by the president's party.
But many people here are struggling.
Fatma has run a hairdresser's for 13 years but for the past two, work has dried up, and the cost of rent and hair products has soared.
She voted for an ultranationalist candidate who came third, and does not trust the two men left in the race.
A few doors up the street, Binnaz is working a sewing machine at a shop for mending clothes.
People cannot afford new dresses so she is earning much more, even if her monthly rent has trebled to to 4,000 lira. Despite Turkey's stricken economy, she is putting her faith in the president.
BBC
I believe [Erdogan] can fix it because he's been in power for 21 years and he has all the power. It's his last term [in office] so he'll do all he can for us
Outside a supermarket, Emrah Turgut says he is also sticking with Mr Erdogan because he has no faith in the other option, and believes the president's unfounded allegations that the biggest opposition party co-operates with terrorists.
Turkey's second-biggest opposition party, the HDP, denies any link to the militant PKK, but President Erdogan has used their backing for the rival candidate to suggest a link to terrorists.
Whoever wins on Sunday, Turkey's parliament is already firmly in the grip of Mr Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party and its far-right nationalist ally, the MHP.
The AKP also has the youngest MP, who arrived in parliament on the eve of the presidential vote.
Zehranur Aydemir, 24, believes if Mr Erdogan wins then he will lay the foundations for a century in which Turkey will become a global power: "Now Turkey has a bigger vision it can dream bigger."
It is another grandiose Erdogan project, but Turkey's economy is likely to prove a more pressing task, whoever wins the run-off.
Russia unleashed the biggest drone attack against Kyiv of the war so far overnight as the city prepared to mark the annual celebration of its founding. However, according to Ukrainian military officials, almost all the Iranian-made aircraft were shot down.
The air force said it shot down 52 out of 54 Shahed drones launched against the city in successive waves, but falling debris still killed one man, injured two people, and set ablaze the roof of a shopping centre.
The attack appeared to come from the north and south and at low altitudes. A spokesperson from Operational Command South said the Russians appeared to be seeking ways of evading Ukraine’s steadily improving air defences.
“The enemy traditionally used the eastern coast of the Azov Sea to attack, but the routes of these aircraft were somewhat unconventional,” the spokesperson told reporters. “They tried to bypass southern air defences as much as possible … They mostly flew over the temporarily occupied territories and dispersed across Ukraine.
“They are trying to gravitate towards riverbeds to hide the direction of movement of the Shahed groups,” she added. “We continue to study new approaches in tactics to be as effective as possible.”
The drone attacks came in the early hours of Kyiv Day, the annual celebration of the city’s founding 1,541 years ago, marked by street fairs and live concerts.
“The history of Ukraine is a longstanding irritant for the insecure Russians,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, said on his Telegram channel.
Serhiy Popko, the head of the capital’s military administration, said on the Telegram messaging app: “Today, the enemy decided to ‘congratulate’ the people of Kyiv on Kyiv Day with the help of their deadly UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles].
“The attack was carried out in several waves, and the air alert lasted more than five hours.”
In some parts of the city, local people, inured to Russian air raids, stood on their balconies, shouting slogans praising Ukrainian air defences and defying Vladimir Putin and Russia.
Military observers have suggested that another goal of the constant stream of Russian air attacks is to exhaust Ukrainian air defence ammunition using cheap Iranian drones. Ukrainian officials have told western capitals that a shortage of anti-aircraft missiles is one of their most pressing concerns, ahead of a planned spring counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces.
During your trial you will have complete digital access to FT.com with everything in both of our Standard Digital and Premium Digital packages.
Standard Digital includes access to a wealth of global news, analysis and expert opinion. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting. For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital, click here.
Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section.
What happens at the end of my trial?
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For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial.
You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.
Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel.
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When Kuenssberg mentions war crimes, including a maternity hospital being attacked in Mariupol and asks why Kelin won’t be honest about what has happened, he replies that the war has been going on since 2014 in the Donbas with crimes being committed on the Ukrainian army side.
He adds: “We want peace. We want no threat from Ukraine to Russia, this is one thing, and second that Russians in Ukraine will be treated like all other nations in the world. Like a French person in Ukraine.
“It is a big idealistic mistake to think that Ukraine will prevail. Russia is 16 times bigger than Ukraine. We have enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously.
“We are just defending the lands which are under control and assisting Russian people over there. We are rebuilding the Donbas.
“It depends on the escalation of war that is taking place. Sooner or later this escalation might have a new dimension that we do not need and we do not want. We can make peace tomorrow, if Ukrainian side will be prepared to negotiate but there is no preconditions for that.
“The German defence minister said if we stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, it will stop the day after tomorrow,” he said and laughs, saying he is right.
“If supplies of weapons will be stopped, it will be stopped the day after tomorrow. Please, stop it.”
Author Bill Browder, who is on a panel on the BBC One current affairs show, said that the Russian government is “failing miserably”.
Browder has written two books about Russia and his experience in finance there, which covers corruption and money laundering.
He said: “Corruption inside Russia has hollowed out the military. The supposed strong force failed at every step, they lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers, they lost huge amounts of equipment.
“As he said Ukraine is a small country compared to Russia and they are being decimated by this small country.
“It is difficult watching that interview because everything he said is a lie. It will be painful when [Ukraine] launch that spring offensive.”
He said it is impossible that Putin is popular, as is claimed, when he has to rely on “totalitarian” measures.
When Kuenssberg mentions war crimes, including a maternity hospital being attacked in Mariupol and asks why Kelin won’t be honest about what has happened, he replies that the war has been going on since 2014 in the Donbas with crimes being committed on the Ukrainian army side.
He adds: “We want peace. We want no threat from Ukraine to Russia, this is one thing, and second that Russians in Ukraine will be treated like all other nations in the world. Like a French person in Ukraine.
“It is a big idealistic mistake to think that Ukraine will prevail. Russia is 16 times bigger than Ukraine. We have enormous resources and we haven’t just started yet to act very seriously.
“We are just defending the lands which are under control and assisting Russian people over there. We are rebuilding the Donbas.
“It depends on the escalation of war that is taking place. Sooner or later this escalation might have a new dimension that we do not need and we do not want. We can make peace tomorrow, if Ukrainian side will be prepared to negotiate but there is no preconditions for that.
“The German defence minister said if we stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, it will stop the day after tomorrow,” he said and laughs, saying he is right.
“If supplies of weapons will be stopped, it will be stopped the day after tomorrow. Please, stop it.”
Vladimir Kara-Murza’s wife Evgenia then is able to ask a question via Kuenssberg’s phone.
She asks why the Russian government needs to use oppression when it says it has support of the people.
Kelin says that Kara-Murza has been treated as a Russian citizenship despite his dual-nationality, which Kelin acknowledges. He said he had not been treated differently from any other prisoner, and it is the court’s judgement.
On the subject of jailed westerners in Russia, Kelin claims that Evan Gerschkovich was arrested as a spy.
The Kremlin’s man in London, Andrei Kelin has spoken to BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday morning about the war in Ukraine.
He said that Yevgeny Prigozhin is a “free man” who is “commenting on what is happening in Bakhmut, and how the battle has gone”.
“I don’t think that he is very much wrong because the threat that existed for us on the eve of the military operation … was really the danger that presented to the existence of our state,” he said, in regards to Prigozhin saying Russia’s existence is at threat.
Kuenssberg challenges him on this, saying it is untrue. Kelin replies with conjecture about the size of the Ukrainian army.
Kelin goes on to say that he doesn’t agree with Prigozhin that there is a chance of “losing Russia”.
In response to a question about the attack on a hospital is justified, he brings up apparent incidents in Luhansk and Donetsk and claims that there has not been any mentions of it in British press.
An interesting piece here from the Kyiv Post on President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s speechwriting team and process.
Senior correspondent Maryna Shashkova said that Zelenskiy’s team say that speeches are “80%” him.
“He always knows what he wants to say, and he immediately formulates it in sentences and phrases. He speaks ready-made thoughts, the speechwriter needs to listen, take notes and possibly add what the president did not say,” a source told the Post.
Others involved are Dmytro Lytvyn, a speechwriter, and Yuriy Kostyuk, who worked with Zelenskiy when he was an actor.
“The main task of a speechwriter is to completely turn off your ego and become a reflection of another person. They can do it,” an official in the president’s office said.
A 41-year-old man died during Russia’s mass drone strike on Kyiv on Sunday morning, after being hit by falling debris.
The death was confirmed by mayor Vitali Klitschko.Posting on Telegram he said that the man had been killed, along with a 35-year-old woman who was injured by the fall of a Shahed drone’s wreckage near a petrol station in Solomyanskyi, in the south-west of the city
Fires were also reported in Kyiv, caused by the drones, as well as damaged buildings which had been struck by the UAVs.
Ukrainian officials are calling the raid on Kyiv the largest drone attack on the city since the start of the war.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed 52 out of the 54 Russia-launched drones, calling it a record attack with the Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones. It was not immediately clear how many of the drones were shot over Kyiv.
The air force said on Telegram that Russia had targeted military and critical infrastructure facilities in the central regions of Ukraine, and the Kyiv region in particular.
Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said earlier that preliminary information indicated the air raid was the largest drone attack since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
He added that Russia used the Iranian-made Shahed drones in the attack. Reuters was not able to independently verify that information.
“Today, the enemy decided to ‘congratulate’ the people of Kyiv on Kyiv Day with the help of their deadly UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles),” Popko said on the Telegram messaging app.
“The attack was carried out in several waves, and the air alert lasted more than five hours.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Iran earlier this week to reconsider the supply of deadly drones to Russia in order to stop their slide into “the dark side of history”. But Iran on Saturday said his comments were really designed to attract more arms and financial aid from the west.
Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. This is Christine Kearney and here’s an overview of the latest.
Russia carried out a major two-wave overnight air attack on Kyiv that killed at least one person, officials said, calling it the biggest drone attack on the capital yet since the start of the war, as Kyiv prepares to celebrate its birthday on Sunday.
The pre-dawn attacks came on the last Sunday of May when the capital celebrates Kyiv Day, the anniversary of its official founding 1,541 years ago. Ukraine says it shot down more than 40 drones.
More on that story soon. In other news:
Preliminary operations have begun to pave the way for a counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces, a Ukrainian presidential adviser has said. “It’s a complicated process, which is not a matter of one day or a certain date or a certain hour,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s an ongoing process of deoccupation, and certain processes are already happening, like destroying supply lines or blowing up depots behind the lines.
The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, raised expectations that a major operation could be imminent by declaring on social media: “The time has come to take back what’s ours.” Zaluzhny’s declaration on the Telegram messaging app on Saturday was accompanied by a cinematic video showing heavily armed Ukrainian soldiers preparing for battle.
Ukraine’s defence ministry has claimed Russia is planning to simulate a major accident at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station to try to thwart Kyiv’s long-planned counteroffensive. The plant, in an area of Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, has been repeatedly hit by shelling that each side blames the other for.
Russian forces have temporarily eased their attacks on the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to regroup and strengthen their capabilities, a senior Kyiv official said on Saturday. Russia’s Wagner private army began handing over its positions to regular Russian troops this week after declaring full control of Bakhmut after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, Reuters reported. In a statement on Telegram, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said Russian forces have continued attacking but that “overall offensive activity has decreased”.
Russian forces have intercepted two long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied to Ukraine by Britain, the RIA news agency cited the defence ministry as saying on Saturday. Reuters reports that the ministry said it had intercepted shorter-range US-built Himars-launched and Harm missiles, and shot down 13 drones in the last 24 hours, RIA reported.
Defeat in its war against Ukraine would leave Russia “vindictive” and “brutal” and posing a threat to Nato countries, the outgoing head of the RAF said. Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston told the Telegraph that Russia’s air force, surface navy and submarine force are a threat to Britain and Nato. He warned its threat could even get worse if the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was ousted.
A construction worker has been killed near the Russian village of Plekhovo, a few kilometres from the border with Ukraine after shelling from the Ukrainian side, said Roman Starovoyt, the governor of the Kursk region. Works were being carried out not far from Plekhovo on fortifying defensive lines for the state border, the governor said on Telegram.
Ukraine struck oil pipeline installations deep inside Russia on Saturday with a series of drone attacks including on a station serving the vast Druzhba oil pipeline that sends western Siberian crude to Europe, according to Russian media. Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia have been growing in intensity in recent weeks, and the New York Times reported that US intelligence believes Ukraine was behind a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month.
Ukraine has asked Germany to supply it with Taurus cruise missiles, an air-launched weapon with a range of 500km (310 miles), a spokesperson for the defence ministry in Berlin said on Saturday. Germany received the request several days ago, the spokesperson said, confirming a report by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She declined to provide further details or say how likely it was that Germany would supply the missiles to Ukraine.
