As the counting of the votes continues in Turkey, votes from the three biggest cities - Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir - might change the result of the elections.

So far, more than 60% of the votes all around the country have been counted and Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ahead.

But many of the votes in the largest cities have yet to be counted.

Istanbul has a population of 16 million, while the capital, Ankara, and the western city of Izmir have a combined population of 10 million, and in all three only half the votes have been counted.

In Izmir and Istanbul so far, Kemal Kilicdaroglu seems ahead, while in Ankara, Erdogan is narrowly in the lead.

Izmir is a stronghold of the opposition CHP, and the party has increased its support in Istanbul and Ankara dramatically since the 2015 elections.

Ankara's mayor has said Kilicdaroglu will win when the results from these three major cities come in.

Image source, AFP

From humble beginnings, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has grown into a political giant, leading Turkey for 20 years and reshaping the country more than any leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered father of the modern republic.

In the 1970s and 80s, Erdogan was active in Islamist circles, joining the pro-Islamic Welfare Party. As the party grew in popularity in the 1990s, Erdogan was elected as its candidate for mayor of Istanbul in 1994.

But his term came to an end when he was convicted of inciting racial hatred for publicly reading a nationalist poem, which included the line:“The mosques are our barracks.”

After serving four months in jail, he returned to politics. But his party had been banned for violating the strict secular principles of the modern Turkish state.

In 2001, he founded a new, Islamist-rooted party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In 2002, the AKP won a majority in parliamentary elections and has been ruling the country ever since.

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who has been the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) since 2010, is running for the presidency for the first time, at the age of 74.

In that time, he has broadened his party's appeal, trying to make peace with the Islamists and erased the party's old militaristic codes.

In the 2019 local elections, the candidates he picked for major cities won, including in Istanbul and Ankara - two cities symbolically important for President Erdogan.

He has also succeeded in uniting six opposition parties - which otherwise have little in common - behind him.

Kilicdaroglu comes from an Alevi family - a distinct Islamic sect, and religious minority in mostly Sunni Turkey.

Find out more about Kilicdaroglu here.

The mayor of Ankara, Mansur Yavas, from the opposition CHP, has claimed that opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu is ahead.

This is based on numbers from his party's officials who are following the vote counting process in every city.

So this stands in contrast to figures from two news agencies that put Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead with around 50% of the vote counted.

What does this mean? We don’t know the full picture yet.

And we’re yet to hear from Turkey's Supreme Election Council - we expect them to make a statement later in the night.

Anna Foster
Reporting from Adana

Flags in Adana crowd the streets. Every billboard has been taken over by posters of smiling, suited politicians.

From tree trunks and railings, to banners strung high across the road, flapping wildly in the strong wind, campaign slogans are everywhere.

This is a real swing city, and memories of February’s devastating earthquakes here are still strong.

Topping up my SIM card in a mobile phone shop in the days before the election, Mustafa leans over the counter to show me a message he’s just tapped into the translation app on his phone.

“We’re getting rid of Erdogan,” it says.

He smiles. He’s confident. He’s voting Kilicdaroglu.

“Where will you watch the result?” I ask him.

“At home,” he types back. “The streets will be messed up. Pro-Erdogan bigots won’t accept the result.”

Across town, AK Party local volunteers Leyla Sasmazoglu and Birgul Karmis pose happily for a photo, tugging their logoed bunting into the picture.

“In the last week, we have been visiting neighbourhoods, houses, shops,” Leyla explains to me, “to reach each and every part of the society”.

Birgul nods. Despite the tightness of this presidential race, especially here in Adana, she has no doubt about the result.

“I know for sure that - just as he was victorious for the past 21 years - this time too, Erdogan will prevail. Under his banner we will grasp the presidency.”

Image source, Getty Images

Omer Celik, spokesman for Erdogan's AK Party, says that the turnout was at record levels in today’s election, without giving any further details.

He also responded to claims about the state news agency, after the opposition cast doubt on the way it was releasing figures.

"Counting of the votes is continuing with transparency. What we need to do is now to wait for the results. The opposition spokespeople are blaming the state’s official news agency for distorting the results. That’s to disregard national sovereignty.

"President Erdogan is ahead and everyone should respect that."

State news agency AA says more than 54% of the votes have been counted, putting Erdogan ahead with 51.9%, while Kilicdaroglu gets 42.3% so far.

Anka, a private news agency, also says that Erdogan is ahead with 47.4% of the votes to Kilicdaroglu's 46.8%. It says 44.5% of the votes have been counted.

In previous years Erdogan’s strongholds have tended to release their results earlier than the opposition areas.

Opposition mayors tell Turks their candidate is leadingpublished at 18:39 British Summer Time 14 May 2023

18:39 BST 14 May 2023

Paul Kirby
Europe digital editor in Ankara

This could be a significant moment, even if it's very early in the evening.

The mayor of Ankara, who is part of the main opposition party, has come out and said that 23.87% of the ballot boxes across Turkey have been opened and the main challenger is ahead.

Mansur Yavas won his post in dramatic elections in 2019, along with Istanbul Mayor Ikrem Imamoglu. Imamoglu was standing to his right when he told reporters that the main opposition party had no faith in the early results because they were coming from Turkey's state news agency, which he said was in a "vegetative state".

Yavas told Turks that as of now Erdogan's rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, "is ahead of the competitor... We have the true information at the moment".

The mayor of Istanbul is seen by many here as a potential president in the making. He could have run this time around, but he was at risk of prosecution, so six opposition parties agreed on Kilicdaroglu.

Ece Göksedef
Live reporter

Image source, BBC/Goktay Koraltan

“Sorry, how do you pronounce your name?” This is probably the phrase I have heard the most since I moved to England - and it’s not just me!

Turkish pronunciation can be tricky, so here is your guide to pronouncing the main candidates' names:

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pronounced Reh-jep Tah-yeep Err-doo-wan

Kemal Kilicdaroglu is pronounced Keh-maal Kilitch-daro-lu

Sinan Ogan is pronounced Sii-nun Oo-wan

We are hearing different things from different news agencies.

State news agency Anadolu (AA) puts President Erdogan ahead on 52.4%, and opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu on 41.7%, based on almost 44% of the votes counted.

However, Anka, a privately owned news agency, which is known to be closer to the opposition, puts Kilicdaroglu ahead on 47.4%, with Erdogan on 46.8% based on 31.3% of the votes counted.

With both agencies, Erdogan started with almost 60% of the votes, and as more votes have been counted, we have seen his lead narrow.

As we’ve already been telling you, in previous years Erdogan’s strongholds have tended to release their results earlier than the opposition areas.

Jonny Dymond
Reporting from Istanbul

The opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu has just tweeted one word, external "ondeyiz" - "we are leading".

There’s claim and counter-claim over who is ahead.

It’s hard to describe how important this election is to millions of Turks; many think democracy itself is on the ballot paper. Some of President Erdogan’s opponents think that this could be the last election in Turkey if he gets another term, such is the drift towards authoritarian rule.

Nerves will be getting rawer up and down the land as the results roll in.

Paul Kirby
Europe digital editor in Ankara

Image source, Reuters

After 21 years of Erdogan government, Turks are making a choice on where there country is going.

Do they stay the course, under a charismatic, authoritarian leader who is credited with modernising their country with big-ticket projects - but who is also blamed for cracking down on their freedoms and removing power from parliament and taking it for himself?

Or do they go with his rival, an opposition leader who has won backing from many of the anti-Erdogan parties and from former Erdogan colleagues?

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, 74, has a history of election defeat but this time could be different.

He promises to return powers to parliament and end the five-year-old executive presidency.

He is also keen to revive Turkey’s previously close ties to the West, both the US and the EU.

For the outside world too, this is a decisive moment.

The 64 million Turks who are eligible to vote are choosing two things.

The first is their president for the next five years. This is crucial, given that President Recep Tayyip is facing possibly his toughest challenge, and that power is concentrated in the presidency.

Secondly, people are deciding who will control parliament. Having a majority in the 600-seat-parliament is still important for passing laws. The opposition is promising to roll back the powers of the president and return the country to a parliamentary system.

Ece Göksedef
Live reporter

The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, and the founding fathers created the country’s first political party at that time, the Republican People's Party (CHP).

The CHP ruled the country for 20 years without a challenge, getting more autocratic with time, and oppressing religious expression in the country.

In the second multi-party elections, on 14 May 1950, a different party - the Democrat Party - won with 55% of the votes. In time, it became autocratic, as well as more conservative. It was toppled in a military coup in 1960.

Erdogan considers his ruling AK Party a successor to the Democrat Party.

Now facing a real challenge from CHP - a party that, since the 1950s, has moved away from its hardline secular ideology to become more open to different ideologies - Erdogan set this year’s election date on 14 May as a reminder to voters of the day CHP was defeated at the ballot box in 1950.

Paul Kirby
Europe digital editor in Ankara

The first official words from Turkey's biggest opposition are both optimistic and one of warning not to treat early results as reliable.

"The picture so far is quite positive," said Faik Oztrak of the Republican People's Party (CHP). But he's warned Turks not to pay attention to the early results put out by the state news agency Anadolu, accusing it of "carrying out an operation that’s not to be trusted".

Certainly, the results coming in early are very skewed and are coming purely from Erdogan party strongholds.

"We recognise it's going to be a record turnout," says Oztrak. But he's urged Turks to wait for more meaningful numbers as the ballot boxes are opened.

Andrew Humphrey
Live reporter

We have to be careful extrapolating too much from those early results which show a lead for Erdogan, and hopefully we'll get a clearer picture as the evening progresses.

But I'll have to leave that to my colleagues Alexandra Fouché, Nathan Williams and Ece Goksedef who I am handing over to here in London and who along with our teams in Turkey will lead you through the the next few hours while we wait for more results to come in.

The first results from the Turkish elections are being reported, and they put President Erdogan way ahead.

But they are based on a small percentage of the vote, 9.1%. On that basis, broadcaster HaberTurk showed Erdogan in the lead with 59.47% compared to opposition rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu with 34.79%.

Initial results were expected to be favourable for Erdogan, as many of the first counts have tended, in the past, to come from his conservative heartland.

Paul Kirby
Europe digital editor in Ankara

Image source, Reuters

We know turnout is going to be high because of the long queues at polling stations, but the key to this election is for Turks to be able to trust the result, especially if it's tight.

So the man in with a chance of beating Erdogan to the presidency has called on his party's large number of volunteers across Turkey to keep their eyes peeled for possible irregularities.

"Never leave the ballot boxes, no matter what, until the last signed ballot box report is delivered," says Kemal Kilicdaroglu on Twitter.

And that message has been echoed by the second largest opposition party too.

Meanwhile Erdogan has praised the voting process as fitting for Turkey's democracy. Although we've seen some reports of irregularities, the Supreme Election Board says nothing untoward has happened so far.

Turkey's Supreme Election Board has lifted the ban on reporting of election results, so we can expect to get an idea soon of how Turks have been voting, but only based on a small share of the vote.

That's more than two hours earlier than we'd been expecting.

Selin Girit
Reporting from Istanbul

Voters in Turkey have cast their votes on a ballot paper featuring 26 political parties in total.

Half of these parties are in the race under election alliances.

The People’s Alliance is comprised of President Erdogan’s AK Party, its long-time de facto coalition partner Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), another smaller nationalist party and an Islamist party. Extreme Islamist Free Cause Party (Huda Par) also supports this alliance and its candidates join the race from AK Party’s ranks. This has caused concerns even amongst AK Party’s own female MPs, as the party is known to object to men and women being treated equally.

The Nation’s Alliance, also known as Table of Six, is bringing together six parties, led by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). Although CHP is a secularist centre-left party, the alliance consists of mainly right-wing parties: Good Party (IYIP), from the nationalist right; the Future Party and the Democracy and Progress Party, both of whom are offshoots of AKP, founded by a former PM and a former economy minister respectively; and the Felicity Party, which has Islamist roots. The ballot paper though will be featuring only CHP and IYIP.

The third biggest election alliance is called Labour and Freedom Alliance and consists of the Green Left Party and Workers’ Party of Turkey. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has entered the race under the Green Left Party’s banner as it feared a possible verdict from the Constitutional Court that would prevent it from running in the parliamentary elections.

There are two more election alliances: the ATA alliance brings together ultra-right wing parties, while the Union of Socialist Forces is at the other end of the political spectrum, consisting of communist and socialist parties.