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With Türkiye’s Presidential Election Going to a Runoff, What Comes Next?

Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds a flag of his portrait outside the AK Party headquarters after polls closed in Türkiye's presidential and parliamentary elections in Ankara, Türkiye, May 15, 2023. (AFP)
Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds a flag of his portrait outside the AK Party headquarters after polls closed in Türkiye's presidential and parliamentary elections in Ankara, Türkiye, May 15, 2023. (AFP)
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With Türkiye’s Presidential Election Going to a Runoff, What Comes Next?

Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds a flag of his portrait outside the AK Party headquarters after polls closed in Türkiye's presidential and parliamentary elections in Ankara, Türkiye, May 15, 2023. (AFP)
Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds a flag of his portrait outside the AK Party headquarters after polls closed in Türkiye's presidential and parliamentary elections in Ankara, Türkiye, May 15, 2023. (AFP)

Close, but not close enough. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received the most votes in a weekend presidential election but could not claim victory because he failed to get the majority support required for an outright win.

Preliminary results showed the longtime leader had 49.5% of the vote. His main challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, garnered 45%, according to Turkish election authorities. A third candidate, nationalist politician Sinan Ogan, received 5.2%.

The election is being followed internationally to see the future direction of Türkiye. The strategically located NATO member has cultivated warm relations with Russia, become less secular and tilted toward authoritarianism under Erdogan.

Kilicdaroglu has promised to reorient the country as a democracy and is expected to adopt a more pro-Western stance.

The Supreme Electoral board said Monday the results mean Erdogan, 69, and Kilicdaroglu, 74, will compete in a runoff election on May 28. Here’s a look at Türkiye’s two-round presidential election system and what happens next:

How does the two-round election work?

Erdogan, who has strengthened his grip on NATO member Türkiye since first coming to national power as prime minister in 2003, succeeded in changing the country's system of government from a parliamentary democracy to an executive presidency through a 2017 referendum.

The change, which took effect after the 2018 elections, abolished the office of the prime minister and concentrated broad powers in the president's hands.

It was therefore decided that the head of both state and government needed to receive more than 50% of the vote to secure office in a single election. Since neither Erdogan nor Kilicdaroglu did that Sunday, the two front-runners must face each other again in two weeks, while the third candidate is out of the running.

France and some other European countries use a similar process for electing presidents.

What part does the third candidate play?

Ogan, 55, a former academic who was backed by an anti-migrant party, could become the kingmaker in the runoff now that he's out of the race. He hasn't yet endorsed either of the remaining candidates.

Turkish nationalists disgruntled with Erdogan but reluctant to vote for Kilicdaroglu, who had support from a six-party alliance and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, appear to have accounted for most of Ogan's votes.

The far right accuses the pro-Kurdish party of having links to outlawed Kurdish militants - an accusation the party denies. Ogan has said he would not back any candidate "who doesn’t keep a distance with the terror organization."

Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Türkiye at the Washington Institute think tank, said most Ogan voters are likely to go for Erdogan whether or not their original candidate endorses the Turkish leader.

"It's certain that Erdogan is going to sweep the second round," Cagaptay said.

What are the likely scenarios?

Erdogan performed better than expected in the election held Sunday, and the People’s Alliance led by his party retained a majority in Türkiye’s 600-seat parliament. Analysts say that gives the Turkish leader an edge in the runoff because voters may want to avoid having different factions running the executive and legislative branches.

Erdogan said as much early Monday.

"We have no doubt that the preference of our nation, which gave the majority in parliament to the People’s Alliance, will be in favor of trust and stability in the (second round)," the president told his supporters in Ankara.

Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, said he was certain of a second-round victory, but Sunday's results indicate he could struggle to attract enough votes even though he was the candidate of the six-party Nation Alliance.

What to expect before the runoff

Analysts suggest the campaigning before the runoff could be brutal. Before Sunday's vote, Erdogan disparaged the opposition as being supported by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. At one rally, he showed hundreds of thousands of his supporters a faked video purporting to show a PKK commander singing an opposition campaign song.

"Information control was President Erdogan’s greatest asset in running and entering the election season. And I think his media loyal to him has successfully framed HDP support to Kilicdaroglu as ‘terrorist support,’" Cagaptay said. "That helped scare away some nationalist voters."

Kilicdaroglu said Erdogan had failed to get the result he wanted despite slinging "slanders and insults" toward the opposition.

Analysts also warned of economic turbulence in the next two weeks. Markets were watching the elections to see if Türkiye would return to more traditional economic policies, as promised by Kilidaroglu. Experts say Erdogan’s economic policies, which ran contrary to mainstream theories, led to the country's currency crisis and soaring inflation.

The Turkish stock exchange, Borsa Istanbul BIST 100 index, dropped 6.2% at Monday’s opening before recovering some ground.

"Türkiye’s political destiny remains on hold until the second round, scheduled for 28 May," Bartosz Sawicki, market analyst at financial services firm Conotoxia, wrote in emailed comments. "(The outcome will) determine whether Türkiye will continue down the path of unorthodox, imbalance-increasing policies or whether, after 20 years, it will return to a path of reform and recovery using methods more in line with economic textbooks."

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North Korea Boasts of ‘The World’s Strongest’ Missile, but Experts Say It’s Too Big to Use in War

A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)
A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)
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North Korea Boasts of ‘The World’s Strongest’ Missile, but Experts Say It’s Too Big to Use in War

A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)
A view shows what they say is a "Hwasong-19" missile being launched at an undisclosed location in this screengrab obtained from a video released on November 1, 2024. (KRT/via Reuters TV/Handout via Reuters)

North Korea boasted Friday that the new intercontinental ballistic missile it just test-launched is "the world’s strongest," a claim seen as pure propaganda after experts assessed it as being too big to be useful in a war situation.

The ICBM launched Thursday flew higher and for a longer duration than any other weapon North Korea has tested. But foreign experts say the test failed to show North Korea has mastered some of the last remaining technological hurdles to possess functioning ICBMs that can strike the mainland US.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency identified the missile as a Hwasong-19 and called it "the world’s strongest strategic missile" and "the perfected weapon system." The official media outlet said leader Kim Jong Un observed the launch, describing it as an expression of North Korea’s resolve to respond to external threats to North Korea’s security.

The color and shape of the exhaust flames seen in North Korean state media photos of the launch suggest the missile uses preloaded solid fuel, which makes weapons more agile and harder to detect than liquid propellants that in general must be fueled beforehand.

But experts say the photos show the ICBM and its launch vehicle are both oversized, raising a serious question about their wartime mobility and survivability.

"When missiles get bigger, what happens? The vehicles get larger, too. As the transporter-erector launchers get bigger, their mobility decreases," Lee Sangmin, an expert at South Korea’s Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

The Hwasong-19 was estimated to be at least 28 meters long (92 feet) while advanced US and Russian ICBMs are less than 20 meters long (66 feet), said Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at Seoul’s Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. He suggested that the missile's size likely helped South Korean intelligence authorities detect the launch plan in advance.

"In the event of a conflict, such an exposure makes the weapon a target of a preemptive attack by opponents so there would be a big issue of survivability," Chang said.

Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network in South Korea, said North Korea may have developed a larger missile to carry bigger and more destructive warheads or multi-warheads. If that's the case, Lee said North Korea could have used liquid fuels as they generate higher thrust than solid fuels. He said some advanced liquid propellants can be stored in missiles for a few weeks before liftoffs.

Lee said North Korea may have placed a dummy, empty warhead on the Hwasong-19 to make it fly higher.

In recent years, North Korea has reported steady advancement in its efforts to obtain nuclear-tipped missiles. Many foreign experts believe North Korea likely has missiles that can deliver nuclear strikes on all of South Korea, but it has yet to possess nuclear missiles that can strike the mainland US.

The hurdles it has yet to overcome, according to experts, include ensuring its warheads survive the heat and stress of atmospheric reentry, improving the guidance systems for the missiles, and being able to use multiple warheads on a single missile to defeat missile defenses.

"Acquiring reentry technology is currently the most important goal in North Korea’s missile development, specifically for ICBMs, but they just keep increasing the ranges instead. This possibly suggests they still lack confidence in their reentry technology," Lee Sangmin said.

Chang said Friday's state media dispatch on the launch lacks details on the technological aspects of the Hawsong-19 and focused on publicity.

Other North Korean claims about its weapons capabilities have been met with wide outside skepticism.

In June, North Korea claimed to have tested a multiwarhead missile in the first known launch of such a weapon, but South Korea said the weapon instead blew up. In July, when North Korea said it had test-fired a new tactical ballistic missile capable of carrying "a super-large warhead," South Korea said the claim was an attempt to conceal a botched launch.

North Korea's missile program is still a major regional security concern, with the country openly threatening to use its nuclear missiles against its rivals. In a joint statement Thursday, the foreign ministers of South Korea, the US and Japan condemned the ICBM launch as a violation of UN Security Council resolutions and said they're committed to strengthening their efforts to block North Korea's illicit revenue generation funding its missile and nuclear programs.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Friday it has imposed unilateral sanctions on 11 North Korean individuals and four organizations for their alleged roles in procuring missile components and generating foreign currency to fund Pyongyang’s weapons program. The sanctions are largely symbolic given that financial transactions between the Koreas have been suspended for years.

Also Friday, South Korea and the US conducted their first-ever joint live-fire exercise using unmanned aerial vehicles as part of efforts to demonstrate their readiness. South Korea’s RQ-4B "Global Hawk" reconnaissance aircraft and the US MQ-9 Reaper strike drone were mobilized for the training, according to South Korea's air force. South Korea and the US have been expanding their regular military drills to cope with North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats.

Observers say that Thursday's launch, the North's first ICBM test in almost a year, was largely meant to grab American attention days before the US presidential election and respond to international condemnation over North Korea's reported dispatch of troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.

North Korea's reported troop dispatch highlights the expanding military cooperation between North Korea and Russia. South Korea. The US and others worry North Korea might seek high-tech, sensitive Russian technology to perfect its nuclear and missile programs in return for joining the Russian-Ukraine war.