Head to head

Turkey's reformers believed their unity candidate had enough support to end Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's long rule. But it is the formidable president who now goes into a runoff poll as favourite

- Ruth Michaelson and Jon Henley

Turkey’s presidential election is going to a runoff after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan comfortably outperformed his chief rival, Kemal

Kılıçdaroğlu, but just failed to clear the 50% vote threshold needed to avoid a second round. The 69-year-old conservative incumbent confounded pollsters’ predictions and his more liberally inclined rival to win the first round of the country’s pivotal election, scoring 49.51% against Kılıçdaroğlu’s 44.88%, with a small number of overseas votes left to count. The runoff will take place on 28 May.

Polls and observers had predicted an advantage if not an outright victory for Kılıçdaroğlu, 74, but the final results from last Sunday’s election made clear that Erdoğan had defied expectations, seizing a majority – along with his nationalist coalition partners – in parliament and forcing a second-round vote in the presidential race.

As the opposition scrambled to process what was a long and difficult evening in which they repeatedly claimed to be in the lead, the six-party coalition that had banded together in the hope of defeating Erdoğan appeared ready to fracture as they attempted to regain momentum before the runoff.

Kılıçdaroğlu was under pressure to adapt quickly to a nationalist groundswell of support signalling a further rightward shift in Turkey's politics, which granted the ultranationalist presidential candidate Sinan Oğan 5% of the overall vote and empowered far-right parties in parliament.

A voting observation mission by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said political participation was high and voters had a choice between true political alternatives, "but the incumbent president and the ruling parties enjoyed an unjustified advantage, including through biased media coverage".