Erdogan consolidates power in Turkey with sweeping win

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was proclaimed the winner early Monday of a landmark election that ushers in a government system granting the president sweeping new powers and which critics say will cement what they call a one-man rule.

The presidential vote and a parliamentary election, both held more than a year early, completed NATO-member Turkey’s transition from a parliamentary system to a presidential one, a process started with a voter referendum last year.

“The nation has entrusted to me the responsibility of the presidency and the executive duty,” Erdogan said in televised remarks from Istanbul after a near-complete count carried by the state-run Anadolu news agency gave him the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

The head of Turkey’s Supreme Election Council, Sadi Guven, declared Erdogan the winner early Monday after 97.7% of votes had been counted. The electoral board plans to announce final official results on Friday.

Based on unofficial results, five parties passed the 10% support threshold required for them to enter parliament, Guven said.

“This election’s victor is democracy, this election’s victory is national will,” Erdogan told a cheering crowd outside his party headquarters in Ankara early Monday, adding that Turkey “will look at its future with so much more trust than it did this morning.”

Earlier, cheering Erdogan supporters waving Turkish flags gathered outside his official residence in Istanbul, chanting “Here’s the president, here’s the commander.”

“Justice has been served!” said Cihan Yigici, one of those in the crowd.

Thousands of jubilant supporters of the proKurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, also spilled into the streets of the predominantly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir after unofficial results from Anadolu showed the party surpassing the 10% threshold and coming in third with 11.5% of the parliamentary vote.

Erdogan, 64, insisted the expanded powers of the Turkish presidency will bring prosperity and stability to the country, especially after a failed military coup attempt in 2016. A state of emergency imposed after the coup remains in place.

Some 50,000 people have been arrested and 110,000 civil servants have been fired under the emergency, which opposition lawmakers say Erdogan has used to stifle dissent.

More than 59 million Turkish citizens, including 3 million expatriates, were eligible to vote.