Turkey

17 May 2023; MEMO: Women's representation in the Turkish Parliament will be the highest level in history after Sunday's parliamentary elections, Anadolu News Agency reports.

According to the unofficial results, 121 women secured seats in the 600-member Parliament.

The female representation rate, which was 17.1 per cent in the previous elections, rose to 20.1 per cent this year.

17 May 2023; MEMO: Turkiye decried, on Tuesday, a report by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) election observation mission on Sunday's elections, Anadolu News Agency reports.

"Some political and accusatory statements in the report that went beyond the election process and inconsistent with the principles of independent and impartial observation were met with regret," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.

17 May 2023; MEMO: The deputy chair of the Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkiye's main opposition party, announced his resignation yesterday.

"In order not to harm the election process, our chairperson and presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, with whom I have been honoured to walk side by side, I am resigning from my post as the deputy chair of CHP's information and communication technologies department due to negative public opinion," Onursal Adiguzel said in a tweet.

16 May 2023; MEMO: Turkiye is set to have a runoff between current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and main opposition rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, later this month, as both candidates failed to secure the necessary 50 per cent of total votes in yesterday's presidential election.

16 May 2023; MEMO: As Turkiye heads to a presidential election runoff on 28 May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed today that he will have a landslide victory, Anadolu has reported. "Now is the time to crown the success we achieved [in the election] on 14 May with a greater victory," Erdogan wrote on Twitter.

16 May 2023; MEMO: The US has congratulated the Turkish people on holding "peaceful" presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, Anadolu has reported.

"The Biden administration lauds the Turkish people for expressing their desires at the ballot box in a peaceful way," said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Monday. "President Joe Biden is looking forward to working with whoever the [presidential election] winner is, although that's not clear right now."

ANKARA, May 15. /TASS/: Turkish opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu may get some of the votes of the eliminated presidential candidate Sinan Ogan (5.2%), but it may not be enough to win in the second round, a source in the main opposition Republican People’s Party told TASS.

ISTANBUL, May 14 (Xinhua) -- An army of volunteers has been monitoring the voting process to prevent any misconduct in Türkiye's presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday.

According to a representative of Vote and Beyond, the most prominent NGO in the country for securing elections, nearly 100,000 volunteers are at the polls across Türkiye's 81 provinces.

14 May 2023; MEMO: Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned the main opposition candidate's policy goals toward Syrian refugees as "inhuman" and "un-Islamic", days before the landmark presidential elections are set to proceed.

15 May 2023; MEMO: Polling stations across Turkiye closed on Sunday as voting in the country's presidential and parliamentary elections ended at 5 p.m. local time (1400GMT), Anadolu reports.

More than 64.1 million people were registered to vote, including over 1.76 million who cast their ballots abroad and 4.9 million first-time voters.

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