Millions of Turkish voters on Sunday went to the polls again to participate in the Turkiye’s first-ever presidential runoff election.

The current round is between the candidate of the “People’s Alliance” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the candidate of the “Nation Alliance” Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

The candidates failed to get enough votes in the first round, which took place on May 14. To succeed, the candidates needed over 50 percent of the votes. In the first round, Erdogan won 49.52 percent of the vote, Kilicdaroglu received 44.88 percent, while the third candidate from the ATA alliance Sinan Ogan received 5.17 percent of the vote.

Ballot boxes were opened throughout the country from 8 a.m. local time, with votes counted immediately after the end of the voting process.

The country entered a period of election silence on Saturday, before the lifting of the ban and the announcement of the results by the media, according to a decision issued by the Supreme Election Council.

The turnout in the first round of elections was 87.04 percent, out of a total of about 65 million voters inside and outside Turkiye, while the runoff saw the participation of nearly 50,000 new voters who had reached the age of 18 during the period between the two rounds.

The runoff takes place with the ruling People’s Alliance securing a majority in parliamentary elections, as it won 323 seats out of 600.

As part of the second round, voting outside the country ended, while voting continued at border crossings, until 5 p.m. local time in Turkiye.

According to the data of the Supreme Electoral Council, voting abroad and at borders reached more than 1.9 million out of nearly 3.5 million voters, at a rate of nearly 55 percent, about 5 percent more than in the first round, according to indefinite figures published by the Turkish media.

Source: Qatar News Agency