Turkish diaspora begin voting in presidental run-off

Neither President Recep Tayyip Erdogan nor challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu secured more than 50 per cent of ballots in first round

People wave Turkish flags during a gathering to mark the Youth and Sports Day, before the May 28 runoff vote, in Istanbul. Reuters

Turkish citizens living abroad began voting on Saturday in Turkey's presidential run-off election between the incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who aims to bring an end to the President's two-decade rule.

The run-off election will be held in Turkey on May 28 after Mr Erdogan fell just short of the 50 per cent threshold needed to win the presidential vote outright last Sunday, in what had been expected to be his greatest political challenge.

More than 3.4 million Turks are eligible to vote abroad, out of a total electorate of more than 64 million, and will cast their ballots from May 20-24.

State-owned Anadolu news agency said voting had started in countries across Asia and Europe. Germany is home to the world's largest Turkish diaspora, where there are 1.5 million Turkish citizens eligible to vote.

In last Sunday's vote, Mr Erdogan's ruling AKP and its nationalist allies won a comfortable parliamentary majority.

Mr Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of a six-party opposition alliance, won 44.88 per cent support in the presidential election and trailed Mr Erdogan on 49.52 per cent and confounding expectations in opinion polls that the challenger would come out ahead.

Attention is now focused on nationalist Sinan Ogan, the candidate who came third with 5.17 per cent support. Any decision by him to support one of the two candidates in the run-off could potentially have a decisive role.

Mr Kilicdaroglu's rhetoric has taken a nationalist turn after he failed to overtake Mr Erdogan in the first round of voting, saying that the government had allowed 10 million refugees into the country and that he would repatriate them all if he were elected.

He provided no evidence regarding the number of migrants. Turkey hosts the world's largest refugee population of about four million, according to official figures. Mr Ogan had campaigned on sending back migrants, including 3.6 million Syrians displaced by war to the south.

Mr Erdogan says only he can ensure stability in Turkey, a Nato member state, as it grapples with a cost-of-living crisis, soaring inflation and the impact of devastating earthquakes in February.