"Someone is in the kitchen, and we are on the balcony": Erdoğan sure of his victory?

"Someone is in the kitchen, and we are on the balcony": Erdoğan sure of his victory?

The results show that the incumbent president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, won 49.39 percent of the votes, and his main rival, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, won 45 percent, Anadolu Agency reported.

Neither Erdoğan, the candidate of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), nor Kılıçdaroğlu, the candidate of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), managed to win more than 50 percent of the votes needed for victory in the first round and will have to compete in the second round that will take place on May 28, reports Reuters.

The presidential election will decide not only who will lead Turkey for the next five years and whether the country returns to a more secular, democratic path, but also how Turkey will deal with a serious economic crisis and rising cost of living, as well as how official Ankara will further build key political relations with Russia, the countries of the Middle East and the West.

Kılıçdaroğlu, who announced that he would win the second round, urged his supporters to be patient and accused Erdogan's party of interfering with the counting of votes and the reporting of the results.

However, Erdogan achieved a better result than the pre-election polls had predicted and addressed his supporters in a confident and fighting mood.

"We are already ahead of our closest rival by 2.6 million votes. We expect this figure to increase with the final official results," said the current Turkish president.

He began his speech with the words "someone is in the kitchen and we are on the balcony", referring to his main opponent Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who during the election campaign published videos from his modest kitchen.

"Although the final results have not arrived yet, we are leading significantly. We do not yet know the final official results, we are waiting for the declaration of the will of our people. While we are waiting for the results, I have decided to give a traditional speech from the balcony in advance," Erdogan said. The BBC reported that this is a clear suggestion that although Erdogan failed to win the first round of the election, he believes he will win the second.

"Our people have decided. We don't need new excuses. We will see the will of our people when we see the final results," he added. Let's recall that Erdogan gave a speech from the same balcony in the previous elections, in which he won more convincingly. The BBC reports that Erdogan appears to be campaigning for the second round from the balcony, using the fact that he won more votes than his rival in the first round.

A victory for Erdogan is likely to favor the official Kremlin, but it will upset the Biden administration, as well as many leaders of European and Middle Eastern countries who have had troubled relations with him.

The third nationalist presidential candidate from the party of the Ancestral Alliance, Sinan Ogan, won 5.3 percent of the vote and, with his support for one of the two main candidates in the second round, could influence the final outcome of the presidential election.