With Turkey’s presidential election going to a runoff, what comes next?

Not quite. Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a weekend presidential election with the most votes but not a majority.

Longtime leader had 49.5% of the vote. Turkish election authorities said opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu received 45%. Nationalist Sinan Ogan received 5.2%.

Turkey’s future is watched internationally through the election. Erdogan has made Turkey less secular, dictatorial, and friendly with Russia.

Kilicdaroglu has pledged to democratize Turkey and become more pro-Western.

The Supreme Electoral Board announced Monday that Erdogan, 69, and Kilicdaroglu, 74, will face battle in a May 28 runoff. Turkey’s two-round presidential election and what happens next:

HOW DO TWO-ROUND ELECTIONS WORK?

Erdogan, who has ruled NATO member Turkey since 2003, changed the country’s government from a parliamentary democracy to an executive president in a 2017 referendum.

The 2018 elections eliminated the prime minister and gave the president enormous powers.

Thus, the head of state and government needed over 50% of the vote to win an election. Since neither Erdogan nor Kilicdaroglu did that Sunday, the two front-runners must confront each other again in two weeks while the third contender is eliminated.

France and other European nations elect presidents similarly.

The third candidate’s role?

Now that Ogan, 55, a former scholar sponsored by an anti-migrant party, is out of the contest, he might decide the runoff. He hasn’t backed either candidate.

Most of Ogan’s votes came from Turkish nationalists dissatisfied with Erdogan but unwilling to vote for Kilicdaroglu, who had support from a six-party alliance and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or HDP.

The pro-Kurdish party denies links to outlawed Kurdish militants. “Who doesn’t keep a distance with the terror organization” is not a candidate Ogan would support.

Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey researcher at the Washington Institute think tank, said most Ogan supporters will vote for Erdogan regardless of whether their candidate endorses him.

Cagaptay said Erdogan would win the second round.

WHAT’S POSSIBLE?

Erdogan’s People’s Alliance won a majority in Turkey’s 600-seat parliament on Sunday after a better-than-expected performance. Analysts think that provides the Turkish leader an edge in the runoff because voters may wish to prevent conflicting factions ruling the executive and parliamentary branches.

Erdogan said so early Monday.

“We have no doubt that our nation, which gave the majority in parliament to the People’s Alliance, will be in favor of trust and stability in the (second round),” the president told supporters in Ankara.

Even though he was the six-party Nation Alliance’s candidate, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu declared he was confident of a second-round win. Sunday’s numbers suggest he may struggle to get enough votes.

PRE-RUNOFF EXPECTATIONS

Analysts predict nasty pre-runoff campaigning. Erdogan called the opposition PKK-backed before Sunday’s elections. He showed hundreds of thousands of his fans a bogus PKK commander singing an opposition campaign song at one gathering.

President Erdogan’s greatest asset was information control. And I think his media loyal to him has successfully presented HDP support for Kilicdaroglu as “terrorist support,” Cagaptay remarked. That discouraged nationalist voters.

Kilicdaroglu claimed Erdogan’s “slanders and insults” to the opposition didn’t work.

In two weeks, analysts predicted economic turmoil. As Kilidaroglu promised, markets were watching the elections to see if Turkey would return to more traditional economic practices. Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies caused the currency crisis and inflation, according to experts.

The Borsa Istanbul BIST 100 index fell 6.2% on Monday before recovering.

“Turkey’s political destiny remains on hold until the second round, scheduled for 28 May,” noted Conotoxia market analyst Bartosz Sawicki. The outcome will determine whether Turkey will continue its unorthodox, imbalance-increasing policies or revert to reform and recovery using economic textbook methods after 20 years.