Türkiye is heading toward a likely runoff presidential election with incumbent President Tayyip Erdogan leading his opposition rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu but falling short of an outright majority to extend his 20-year rule of the NATO-member country.

According to preliminary results delivered by the semi-official Anadolu Agency early Monday, neither of the candidates exceeded the 50-percent threshold of votes needed to win outright. Erdogan received 49.67 percent of the vote when 93 percent of the ballots were counted, against 44.59 percent of the vote for opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Anadolu reported. The third candidate, Sinan Ogan, garnered 5.3 percent of support.

Kilicdaroglu, who said he would prevail in the runoff, urged his supporters to be patient and accused Erdogan's party of interfering with the counting and reporting of results.

But Erdogan performed better than pre-election polls had predicted, and he appeared in a confident and combative mood as he addressed his supporters.

"We are already ahead of our closest rival by 2.6 million votes. We expect this figure to increase with official results," Erdogan said, calling for the avoidance of "hastily" announcing the election's results.

If no presidential candidate secures a simple majority, or 50 percent, of the votes in the first round, a second ballot will be scheduled between the two frontrunners on May 28.

As counting of the ballot boxes for the parliamentary election was also finishing, unofficial results showed that the People's Alliance, formed by Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the New Welfare Party and the Great Union Party, had 323 lawmakers, the highest among three alliances that ran for the 600-seat parliament.

The six-party opposition block Nation Alliance gained a total of 214 lawmakers and could not secure the 360 seats required to hold a referendum for ending the current executive presidency that they pledged in their election campaign.

The Labor and Freedom Alliance, a coalition of left-wing political parties, had 63 lawmakers, with the Green Left Party gaining 60 seats and the Workers' Party of Türkiye three lawmakers.

Some 61 million voters were registered to cast ballots. Around 3.5 million voters living abroad were called to cast their votes in advance. The voter turnout was high at nearly 80 percent.

(With input from Reuters, Xinhua)

(Cover: A person casts a ballot during the presidential and parliamentary elections in Istanbul, Türkiye, May 14, 2023. /Reuters)