In the first round of the presidential election, 65 percent of Turkish voters in Germany voted for Erdogan. Now they can vote again for the runoff.
Turkish voters in Germany can cast their ballots in the presidential run-off today. By May 24, the 1.5 million voters in Germany are called upon to vote at the polls between incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu from the CHP.
Erdogan is the favorite ahead of the second round at home and abroad after narrowly missing out on an outright majority in the first round on May 14.
Erdogan calls for voting
The fact that he finished ahead of his challenger also has something to do with the votes from abroad. Of the 3.4 million Turks living abroad who were eligible to vote, only about half went to the polls. 57.7 percent of them voted for the incumbent head of state. Kemal Kilicdaroglu got almost 40 percent of the votes. In Germany, too, only about every second person entitled to vote cast their vote, but 65 percent of them for Erdogan according to preliminary figures. The ruling AKP, together with the votes of its ultra-nationalist partner MHP, won the parliamentary vote last Sunday.
Observers also expect similar voting behavior from voters abroad in the forthcoming elections. Most of the Turkish foreign voters live in Germany. Erdogan addressed his supporters yesterday, thanked them for their votes in the first round and asked them to vote again. “Each of you has already engraved your name in our political history with golden letters,” Erdogan wrote on Twitter. “I ask you to make sure you exercise your democratic rights.”
Expert: Erdogan makes politics for the Turks abroad
Turks abroad were able to vote in specially set up polling stations for the first time in 2014. The regulation goes back to Erdogan. It is one of the current head of state’s systematic measures aimed at migrants from Turkey and their children born abroad, writes Sinem Adar for the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. Unlike the opposition, Erdogan makes politics for the Turks abroad, which pays off for him at the ballot box. In Turkey, the possibility of voting at the ballot box abroad is repeatedly criticized, especially by members of the opposition.
In the 2018 elections, around half of the Turks who were eligible to vote in Germany used their right to vote. Around 65 percent voted for Erdogan. At that time, he also performed significantly better in the Federal Republic than in the overall result (around 53 percent).
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
