With more than 80 percent of the votes of Belgian Turks counted, it it is clear how popular Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in the Turkish community of the country. In total, 74.9 percent of their votes went to Erdogan. The challenger Muharrem Ince captured 15 percent of the vote. none of the other candidates passed the electoral threshold (10 percent) among the Belgian Turks.
In Turkey, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (64) won the presidential election with nearly 53 percent of the vote. His major challenger, Muharrem Ince, won just over 30 percent of the vote. Thanks to his outright win, there will be no second round of voting.
Among the 60 million voting Turks, no fewer than three million eligible voters live outside the country. Most of them live in Germany (1.4 million), France (340,000) and the Netherlands (260,000). 142,463 voting Turks live in Belgium. Of them, a total of only 42.6 percent voted.
The support for Erdogan from Turks living abroad was not surprising. "Foreign voters were an important part of our success," he said at a victory speech after last year's referendum that approved and paved the way for Sunday’s election.
Arthur Rubinstein
The Brussels Times
