Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Preliminary, unofficial results from Turkey’s state Anadolu news agency showed incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead with 67% of ballot boxes counted, while a competing news agency gave a slight lead to the opposition candidate in a presidential runoff that will decide whether the country’s longtime leader stretches his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade.

Anadolu showed Erdogan at 55%, and his challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, at 45%.

27 May 2023; AA: Türkiye is heading to a runoff vote on Sunday to elect the president after no candidate was able to reach the 50% threshold in the first round held on May 14.

The voting will begin on Sunday at 8 a.m. local time (0500GMT) and end at 5 p.m. local time (1400GMT).

More than 60 million people are registered to vote, including 4.9 million first-time voters.

A total of 191,885 ballot boxes have been set up for voters in the country.

ANKARA, May 26 (Xinhua) -- Three years after George Floyd was killed by four police officers in the U.S. state of Minnesota, the case still haunts Black Americans and fuels their skepticism and distrust of police, Türkiye's semi-official Anadolu Agency reported on Thursday.

The murder of Floyd on May 25, 2020 "showed the world how (American) police treat Black people differently than white people," Anadolu quoted Alicia Jennings, a 39-year-old living in Houston, as saying.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has parlayed his country’s NATO membership and location straddling Europe and the Middle East into international influence, is favored to win reelection in a presidential runoff Sunday, despite a host of domestic issues.

26 May 2023; MEMO: Turkiye has launched the construction of a mega-scale housing project to resettle Syrian refugees in northern Syria, Turkish media outlets reported.

The project includes nearly a quarter of a million housing units on the outskirts of the town of Ghandura in the Jarablus region on the border with Turkiye.

26 May 2023; MEMO: Like many Syrians in Turkiye, Ghaith Sameer is awaiting the result of Sunday's election runoff with trepidation, fearing a win for an opposition candidate who promises to swiftly repatriate migrants, Reuters reports.

Sameer fled Syria's civil war in 2012 and is now one of over 3.4 million Syrians living in neighbouring Turkiye, where economic woes have aggravated a rising tide of hostility that has washed into the presidential election.

ISTANBUL, May 26 (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan has defied forecasts of his political demise in Turkey's elections, rallying voters with a potent mix of religious conservatism and nationalism that looks set to propel his rule into a third decade on Sunday.

Though he has yet to clinch victory - Erdogan must first beat Kemal Kilicdaroglu in Sunday's runoff - his momentum has only grown since he emerged with a solid lead in the first round on May 14, and analysts fully expect him to win.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Two opposing visions for Turkey’s future are on the ballot when voters return to the polls Sunday for a runoff presidential election that will decide between an increasingly authoritarian incumbent and a challenger who has pledged to restore democracy.

25 May 2023; MEMO: Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia amounted to $780.5 million in the first four months of the year, making up about one per cent of the country's total exports according to Anadolu Agency, which cited data by the Turkish Exporters Council.

Saudi is 22nd largest importer of Turkish goods.

Carpets topped the Turkish products exported to Saudi Arabia, at $109 million, followed by grains and legumes at $81 million, then chemicals at $77 million.

25 May 2023; MEMO: As part of racist electoral campaigns being witnessed in Turkiye ahead of Sunday's presidential election, Gacrux Game Studio launched the Zafer Tourism game, which is named after the extremist Turkish Zafer (Victory) Party.

The game, available on smartphones, focuses on throwing refugees who are trying to enter an unspecified country into trucks to take them back to the country they came from.