Overseas Turkish voters achieve record turnout in presidential election

Voting in the second round of the presidential election concluded for overseas voters of Turkey on May 20, and overseas Turkish citizens shattered previous records, with Germany emerging as the frontrunner in terms of voter participation.

According to the data released by the Supreme Election Council, a total of 1,889,512 voters cast their ballots at the polling centers established in foreign representation offices and customs until 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night. This number corresponds to 55.32% of the 3,416,150 registered overseas voters.

Voting at customs will continue until May 28.

In the first round of the Presidential elections, the voting period in overseas representative offices, which lasted approximately two weeks, was reduced to five days in the second round. In the first round held between April 27th and May 9th, a total of 1,691,531 votes were cast in overseas representative offices excluding customs, while the total number of votes cast in the second round, excluding customs, was determined as 1,780,343.

The total number of voters who cast their ballots in overseas representative offices and customs in the first round was 1,839,470. The voter turnout among the approximately 3.4 million voters residing abroad was over 53%.

Tayyip Erdogan, the presidential candidate of the People's Alliance, received 57.47% of the overseas votes in the first round, while Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition’s joint presidential candidate, received 39.57%.

MOST VOTES CAST IN GERMANY

A record number of votes were cast in Germany, where the highest number of voters reside outside of Turkey, during the voting process held between May 20th and 24th. While 724,447 votes were cast in the first round of the elections in Germany, 760,882 voters went to the ballot box in the second round. The participation increased by 60,684 people in the second round.

The ballot boxes set up in 17 centers in Germany received the most attention in the Essen Consulate region, where 90,662 people voted. In the Stuttgart region, 84,223 votes were cast, and in Düsseldorf, 76,203 votes were cast.

VOTER TURNOUT IN OTHER COUNTRIES

The participation also increased in the United States compared to the first round. While 51,597 votes were cast in the first round in the United States, this number exceeded 55,000 in the second round.

In Australia, 21,183 votes were cast in the second round, 67,720 in Austria, 91,763 in Belgium, 67,867 in Great Britain and Ireland, 955 in China, 16,604 in Denmark, 3,220 in Finland, 207,255 in France, 160,799 in the Netherlands, 4,739 in Ireland, 14,219 in Sweden, 66,186 in Switzerland, 10,512 in Italy, 3,021 in Japan, 22,241 in Canada, 16,300 in Luxembourg, and 4,767 voters cast their ballots in Russia.