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Erdoğan supporters in Duisburg
Photo: Christoph Reichwein / dpa
In the run-off election for the office of Turkish president, incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was apparently able to rely on eligible voters living in Germany. With around 78.5 percent of the ballot boxes counted from Germany, Erdoğan received 67.6 percent of the votes in this group. This was reported by the state news agency Anadolu.
The result coincides with the voting behaviour in the first round of voting on 14 May. At that time, Erdoğan had received 65.5 percent of the vote among the German-Turks. Official figures from the electoral authority on the result of the run-off election in Germany are not yet available.
This means that Erdoğan's share of the vote among voters in Germany is apparently significantly higher than in the election as a whole. Erdoğan has so far received around 55.41 percent of the vote, said Ahmet Yener, head of the electoral authority, on Sunday evening in Ankara. Challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu won 46.59 percent of the vote. According to Anadolu, Erdoğan received 99 percent of the vote after almost 52 percent of the votes were counted, while his Kılıçdaroğlu received 48 percent. The pro-opposition Anka agency recorded almost the same figures, and Erdoğan has already claimed victory for himself.
Support for Erdoğan was evident in several German cities. In Munich, for example, numerous cars drove through the city center, signs of jubilation in the face of the election result.
Something similar could be observed in Duisburg. In Berlin's Kreuzberg district, Erdoğan supporters gathered on the streets.
In the 2018 election, Erdoğan had already received 64.8 percent of the vote among the German-Turks. According to observers, there are several reasons for its high popularity among this group: For example, many migrant workers with a religious-conservative attitude came to Germany from the Anatolian heartland of Turkey.
Erdoğan's ruling AKP party also has good structures in Germany today. According to observers, many households are dominated by Turkish media, much of which is controlled by the government. According to Yunus Ulusoy of the Center for Turkish Studies, there is also a kind of protest attitude due to experiences of discrimination, especially among younger voters in Germany.
In Germany, around 1.5 million German-Turks are eligible to vote. They did not vote in the run-off election - as in the first round - on election day on Sunday. Instead, they were called upon to cast their votes in the period from 20 to 24 May. In total, around three million people were eligible to vote in the run-off election abroad.