Erdogan's Money and Election Fraud Allowed Him to Surpass Kilicdaroglu by Four Percent: Karen Hovhannisyan

“In Turkey, the leader is Erdogan with a slight advantage in ballots, but I can confidently state that Kilicdaroglu has won. He has won even without the logic of a second round, but Erdogan's enormous resources, money, and election fraud have allowed him to at least surpass Kilicdaroglu by four percent, so that even in case of a complaint, they would be on equal footing,” wrote military expert Karen Hovhannisyan on his Facebook page, noting that he believes Turkey has entered a phase of new instabilities and crises.

“These elections speak to the fact that Erdogan, who controls the power structures and administrative levers, is deemed an unacceptable figure by society. Even the election of an unacceptable figure through electoral violations will have its consequences in the form of clashes,” Hovhannisyan emphasized.

It should be noted that in the results of the counting of all ballots in the Turkish presidential elections, none of the candidates have crossed the 50 percent threshold, with the incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan receiving 49.24 percent of the votes, while his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu received 45.06 percent. The country's electoral commission has declared over one million ballots invalid.