ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday narrowly won a historic runoff election that extended two decades of his transformative but divisive rule until 2028.

The 69-year-old leader overcame Turkiye’s worst economic crisis in a generation and the most powerful opposition alliance to ever face his Islamic-rooted party, remaining undefeated in national polls.

Streets erupted in car-honking jubilation and tributes poured in from across the world as Turkiye’s most important leader in modern history climbed atop a bus in Istanbul to celebrate his toughest election win.

“We will be ruling the country for the coming five years,” Erdogan told his ecstatic supporters after leading a chorus of his campaign song. “God willing, we will be deserving of your trust.”

Defeats secular rival Kilicdaroglu by four percentage points in presidential runoff

Near-complete results showed Erdogan beating secular opposition challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu by four percentage points.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said it showed the support for Erdogan’s “efforts to strengthen state sovereignty and pursue an independent foreign policy”.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said he wanted to keep working with Erdogan “for the security and stability of Europe”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he hoped to “advance our common agenda with a fresh impetus”.

Former US president Donald Trump — one of Erdogan’s closest personal allies during his second decade of rule — hailed the “big and well deserved victory”.

Traffic on Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square ground to a halt and huge crowds of singing and flag-waving supporters gathered outside the presidential palace in Ankara.

Turkiye’s longest-serving leader was tested like never before in what was widely seen as the country’s most consequential election in its 100-year history as a post-Ottoman republic.

Kilicdaroglu pushed Erdogan into Turkiye’s first runoff on May 14 and narrowed the margin further in the second round.

Opposition supporters viewed it as a do-or-die chance to save Turkiye from being turned into an autocracy by a man whose consolidation of power rivals that of Ottoman sultans.

Kilicdaroglu’s brief concession statement expressed “real sadness about the big difficulties awaiting the country” with Erdogan.

Opposition gamble

Kilicdaroglu re-emerged a transformed man after the first round. The 74-year-old former civil servant’s message of social unity and freedoms gave way to desk-thumping speeches about the need to immediately expel migrants and fight terrorism.

His right-wing turn was targeted at nationalists who emerged as the big winners of the parallel parliamentary elections. Analysts doubted Kilicdaroglu’s gamble would work.

His informal alliance with a pro-Kurdish party that Erdogan portrays as the political wing of banned militants left him exposed to charges of working with “terrorists”.

And Kilicdaroglu’s courtship of Turkiye’s hard right was hampered by the endorsement Erdogan received from an ultra-nationalist who finished third two weeks ago.

Champion of poor

Erdogan is lionised by poorer and more rural swathes of Turkiye’s fractured society because of his promotion of religious freedoms and modernisation of once-dilapidated cities in the Anatolian heartland.

But Erdogan has caused growing consternation across the Western world because of his crackdowns on dissent and pursuit of a muscular foreign policy. He launched military incursions into Syria that infuriated European powers and put Turkish soldiers on the opposite side of Kurdish forces supported by the United States.

His personal relationship with Putin has also survived the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. Turkiye’s troubled economy is benefiting from a crucial deferment of payment on Russian energy imports that helped Erdogan spend lavishly on campaign pledges this year.

Erdogan also delayed Finland’s membership of Nato and is still refusing to let Sweden join the US-led defence bloc.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2023