Turkey’s pivotal presidential election will be decided in a runoff, Supreme Election Council announced on Monday after neither of the candidates secured more than 50 percent of the vote.
The May 28 second-round vote will decide the new president.
Incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan fell short of an outright victory, even though he had a lead against his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Erdogan took 49.5 percent of Sunday’s vote, while Kilicdaroglu, settled for 44.89 percent.
Sinan Ogan from the ATA Alliance, the third candidate, received 5.17 percent.
The Turkish news agency published preliminary results that showed AK Party won 266 seats, while the main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) won 166 seats in the 600-seat parliament.
