Turkey election: Erdogan clearly ahead again with German-Turks

Among the Turkish people who are entitled to vote in Germany, a clear majority for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is once again emerging in the presidential election. With almost 98 percent of the ballot boxes counted from Germany, the incumbent accounted for almost two-thirds of the votes, according to figures from the state news agency Anadolu. Official figures from the electoral authority on the result in Germany are not yet available. According to the interim results, a good 65 percent of the votes in Germany went to Erdoğan. Opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, on the other hand, only got just under 33 percent.

Erdoğan is likely to do much better in Germany than in Turkey: According to the Turkish electoral authority, he is only just ahead of Kılıçdaroğlu, who has 44.96 percent, with 49.51 percent of the vote.

Because the candidates lack an absolute majority, they go to a runoff on May 28th. Voters with a Turkish passport in Germany and other countries can cast their votes between May 20 and 24. In Germany, around 1.5 million German-Turks are entitled to vote. About a third of them live in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Erdoğan was also far ahead of the German-Turks in the 2018 presidential election: He came to 64.8 percent in this country – and 52.6 percent overall. Turks residing outside Turkey have been able to vote abroad since 2014.

The integration researcher Hacı-Halil Uslucan explained why Turks in Germany vote more often for Erdoğan than in Great Britain or Sweden, also with the origin of the Turks, who came to Germany many decades ago. “The people of Turkish origin in Germany […], the first migration wave of the so-called “guest workers”, mostly came from the Black Sea coast or from Anatolia. This population was less educated, often came from the countryside, was strongly conservative and Islamic. These people uphold traditional religious values ​​- to this day.”

On the other hand, it was mainly students and academics who went to Great Britain, “rather left-wing or liberal voters”. Sweden has taken in many Kurdish refugees, which is why the Kurdish HDP is about as strong there among Turkish citizens as the AKP.