Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, also known as AK Party has won a majority in the country’s parliament, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.
The Turkish news agency published preliminary results that showed AK Party won 266 seats, while the main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) won 166 seats in parliament.
According to Al Jazeera, the AK Party won the majority despite losing the overall number of parliamentary seats.
“The number of AK Party seats in parliament has decreased from 296 to 266,” Al Jazeera’s Omar Hajj reported from Izmir.
Earlier, reports suggested that Turkey headed for a runoff vote after President Tayyip Erdogan led over his opposition rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu in Sunday’s election but fell short of an outright majority to extend his 20-year rule of the NATO-member country.
Neither Erdogan nor Kilicdaroglu cleared the 50% threshold needed to avoid a second round, to be held on May 28, in an election seen as a verdict on Erdogan’s style of governance, Associated Press reported.
