On Monday Turkey's High Election Board confirmed that the country's two leading candidates from Sunday's election will hold a runoff vote in two weeks, after neither incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan nor top opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu broke past the 50% threshold needed to win outright in the first round.
Erdogan and his AK party's allies are expected to retain a parliamentary majority as a result of the Sunday elections, which saw some of the highest voter turnout in the nation's history. Turnout was 89% of eligible voters. With 100 percent counted, Erdogan captured 49.5% of the vote - which is significantly better than even pre-election polls predicted - compared to Kilicdaroglu's 44.9%.
As we noted previously, real surprise - and disruptor for both sides - was a third candidate, Sinan Ogan of the ultra-nationalist Ancestor Alliance. He took 5.2% of the vote and and prevented an outright win for either of the two leading candidates. Will Ogan endorse Erdogan or Kilicdaroglu in the runoff? This could be a major factor in determining the outcome in two weeks (May 28).