Turkey elections 2018: Erdoğan faces challenge from Ince – live updates

This could be very significant: if the pro-Kurdish HDP does pass the 10% threshold, it will be almost impossible for Erdoğan’s AKP to hold onto its parliamentary majority.

However, only 34% of ballots have so far been counted in the parliamentary vote. Early days yet.

And Muharrem Ince, the leading opposition candidate, weighs in with his criticism of the state-run news agency, too:

Anadolu Agency is conducting manipulation, they are primarily showing the results of the ballot boxes where Erdogan is ahead. Do not get demoralised and leave the ballot boxes.

The BBC’s Turkish service correspondent highlights the difference in the provisional tallies being reported by Anadolu and independent monitors as the number of votes counted approaches 50%:

A reminder of how the official state-run Anadolu news agency has tended to skew early results reporting in past elections.

According to the agency’s critics, it does this in order to discourage opposition activists so they abandon their observation posts at polling stations ...

The citizen journalist news agency dokuz8 is reporting that the main opposition CHP party is confident its candidate Muharrem Ince will finish very close indeed to Erdoğan, and in any case force a run-off round next month:

Once again, with fewer than 40% of votes counted the figures so far are no indication of the final outcome.

A handy reminder of what to watch out for when the results start to get more meaningful (generally once more than 70% of votes are counted):

With 32% of votes counted in the presidential poll, according to the official state-run Anadolu Agency, Erdoğan is on 57.73% and Ince on 27.79%.

To put things in perspective, in last year’s constitutional reform referendum, the president’s “yes” camp was on 61.8% of the vote with 31% of ballots counted. Three hours later, with 97% counted, his support had dwindled to 51.4%.

Warnings are coming in thick and fast that the result could be very close indeed:

Voting appears to be going very fast, particularly in the presidential poll. We are currently at around 25% of votes counted – reasonably firm conclusions can be drawn when the count hits around 70%, observers reckon, which could be in less than an hour:

Bloomberg’s Benjamin Harvey reports that heavy trucks have rolled in to protect the presidential palace in Ankara – perhaps a sign that Erdoğan is not feeling altogether as confident as he might be?

Kareem Shaheen writes that initial results - partial, of course, and very early – will start being reported very soon now since the election board has lifted its reporting ban:

The supreme election board (YSK) in Turkey has announced it will lift the news ban on early election results at 6:45 pm Turkey time, which is in three mins. So expect results to start coming in right away.

Another startling image of just how determined many Turkish voters were to make it to the ballot box today:

Muharrem Ince, the candidate for the leading opposition Republican People’s party, has called on citizens “to not abandon the ballot boxes” without signed results and asked people to go to their district electoral committees to monitor.

Ince, who has mounted an unexpectedly strong challenge to Erdoğan in the later stages of the campaign, has been warning of voting irregularities and undue pressures on civil servants. Election council members should do their jobs without fear and “abiding by law”, he said.

Within an hour of the polls closing, the opposition’s presidential candidate, Muharrem Ince, says he has started getting early unofficial results – and he’s not unhappy. “I’m smiling,” he said, according to the T24 news site.