AK Party gears up for Turkish runoff vote, draws road map

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan convened his Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) Central Executive Committee in the capital Ankara on Monday evening to resume efforts to secure a decisive victory in the second round of the elections.

Sunday’s elections ended with a victory of the AK Party and Erdoğan, but the race is not over yet. Failure to exceed the threshold brought them to the runoff set for May 28, Daily Sabah reports.

For three hours, the party’s top names discussed the outcome of the election at the meeting, while Erdoğan instructed the staff to double the efforts for winning the runoff, according to the Turkish media outlets. The party will now focus on a new campaign strategy for the remaining 12 days in the tense race.

The meeting focused on the voting rate of the party and the People’s Alliance it led, as well as the performance of the vote-watching system the party set up for accurate results during the counting process. It also concentrated on provinces where the AK Party suffered losses.

The party now aims to recoup the losses through a more intense campaign in those places, particularly provinces that were affected by the Feb. 6 earthquakes in Türkiye’s south. Erdoğan is also expected to travel to provinces in the disaster zone first in his campaign trail. Another area of concentration will be provinces where Sinan Oğan managed to garner over 5% of the vote in a surprising leap. Erdoğan is also expected to visit those provinces in the campaign trail.

Elsewhere, the party will file objections to election results in critical provinces it sought to win, including Hakkari and Batman in the east, Isparta in the west and Mersin in southern Türkiye.

Erdoğan told the meeting that they would respect people’s choice and that what mattered to them now was keeping the lead as they did in the first round.

The party also plans to set up joint campaign offices for the People’s Alliance, instead of campaign offices for each member of the alliance, to convey a message of unity.

In a tweet on Tuesday, President Erdoğan urged voters “regardless of their political party” to back him in the runoff vote. “The May 14 elections were a festive occasion fit for our democracy with a high turnout and thanks to our revered nation’s common sense.

"The nation stood up for its free will, despite political engineering through covers of magazines, social media and by Qandil and Pennsylvania,” Erdoğan said.

London-based weekly The Economist came under fire before the elections for a cover calling on Turkish voters to depose Erdoğan, under the provocative title “Erdoğan Must Go.” Erdoğan was also critical of the PKK terrorist group's support to the opposition bloc and the fact that the terrorist group's senior cadres are still hiding out on northern Iraq’s Qandil mountain. He also lamented the Gülenist Terror Group's (FETÖ) support for the opposition bloc, whose leader Fetullah Gülen lives in the US state of Pennsylvania.

“Regardless of the outcome, the winner of the May 14 elections is Turkish democracy and the nation. The nation overwhelmingly chose me with over 27 million votes and showed how much it trusted us, how much it believed us and our People’s Alliance, and saw a good future (under our leadership) by electing our lawmakers to Parliament. I am grateful to each of 56 million people who cast their ballots and kept democracy alive for their vote,” Erdoğan said.

He underlined that as a politician who always recognized people’s will as the sole power and “never deviated from the course the nation drew,” he respected this will be reflected on the ballots.

“Until May 28, we will fulfil our responsibility to the people by not resting and by passionately working. We will come out victorious in May 28 election by raising the number of votes we won on May 14 and will accomplish a historic success, God willing,” he said.

Erdoğan added that they already started working to accomplish their “Century of Türkiye” vision, referring to ambitious projects and reforms he unveiled last year for the centenary of the Republic of Türkiye in 2023.