>>> After 20 years in power, Turkey's long-time leader is facing a runoff election.
It could have huge implications for the nato alliance and the war on Ukraine.
This morning.
It looks like Turkish president erdogan has failed to maintain a majority.
And he continues to block Sweden from joining nato, which would be a huge blow to Vladimir
Putin.
No one better to talk to this than CNN's international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.
Two years and a very complex relationship between erdogan and Turkey and nato and the
united States, because they prove critical in some ways, the grand deal, et cetera.
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deal, et cetera.
But also, they prove to be very difficult.
>> They're difficult.
Turkey is a difficult ally, because as you pointed out, it's so important.
Nato has so many countries, but Turkey is the second biggest military.
And there, it's on the ground.
It's easily deployable.
But over the years, Turkey has, particularly under erdogan, starting about 20 years ago,
when he actually opened up and demo democratized Turkey, then with the attempted coup against
him, he cracked down and started to become a lot more authoritarian and that's what's
made him incredibly unpredictable when it comes to being a rock-solid western ally.
And of course, before, Turkey used to be kind of the de facto bridge between east and west.
But under erdogan, they have dropped their attempts to get into the eu, because there
are a lot of conditions that they are
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lot of conditions that they are unwilling to meet.
>> What does it say to you that this is going to a runoff.
That he couldn't get 50% of the vote and the referendum of him that that is?
>> It is a referendum.
He is -- you know, he actually went into this for the first time lagging in the votes.
Now, what you've seen is, the vote count has shown that he actually took more of the vote
in the first round than his challenger and the challenger is, you know, part of a coalition.
They banded together to see if they could, in fact, unseat him.
>> But it's never before worked?
>> Not in this way, no.
Now it looks as if the election committee has said, he's got more.
He has 49 plus percent.
He has not made it across the finish line yet.
To be fair, the Turkish system has never had a runoff, it has only since 2018.
He won handedly the first time.
You can't say it's the first time in 20 years that he's faced runoff, but the first time
since
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runoff, but the first time since they've had a runoff that he's faced a runoff.
A lot of people are learning the name Kamal clich drulio.
Is any struggle necessary?
People should be confident that we will definitely win.
But what he has put forward is such a contrast to erdogan.
He talked about the price of onions, filmed this video in his modest kitchen.
Trying to say, I'm so different from your current president.
>> And touching on the thing that's motivated most voters, the cost of living crisis.
The economic crisis is very, very severe.
If you look at any reports that are coming out of there, lots of interviews by ordinary
people who have to make a living and who have to eat.
Many people who have been voting akp, which is erdogan's party for years, and he has a
very strong base, are saying, look, you know, we are doing worse off than our families did
all of these years ago.
We who used to eat chicken or meat once a week are now maybe doing it once a month.
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doing it once a month.
So that on top of the earthquake, which killed some 50 50,000 people and highlighted the
corruption that they have blamed the Turkish government, allowing builders and others to
pay people under the table and have shoddy construction, but he's a very good and canny
politician, this erdogan.
And he knows and he has a very fervent base.
He is a politician.
He used to be mayor of istanbul.
He knows what it means to be a politician.
The other gentlemen was an economist.
He knows exactly what has to be done to get the economy back on track, which is what people
need.
But some people have said his -- so far, anyway, his campaign style has not matched that of
erdogan.
We'll see.
>> And the reason the complications for this are so profound, of course, go Ukraine, at
the heart of that.
>> At the moment.
>> The other thing we saw over the weekend, this development that was striking to me was
the prigozhin, the mers their chief of the Wagner group that has been helping Russia
fight in Ukraine, back in January he
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Ukraine, back in January he offered to Ukrainian intelligence service the position of Russian
troops.
Basically, they would have the intent of firing upon them, offering their positions if Ukraine
withdrew their soldiers from that key city of bakhmut which has faced such intense fighting.
What was your reaction from you?
>> Look, is it absolutely really an intense situation, because what prigozhin is doing
with his Wagner group is challenging Putin without challenging Putin.
He never attacks Putin himself.
But he's constantly attacking, you know, the two major military -- the defense minister
and the army commander.
And he's trying to put himself in a good position with Putin.
And he has the only troops that apparently are willing to go there.
But you've seen that it actually hasn't worked yet.
I mean, they've tried and they've tried and they've tried.
And they have not achieved success in bakhmut.
And it is a terrible meat grinder there.
But the forces who are achieving slightly more success right now
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slightly more success right now are the Ukrainian troops.
And you know zelenskyy's in London today -- >> I was just going to ask you about that.
>> He's been on a weekend tour of eu and allied nato capitals saying, if you want us to go
on this counteroffensive, we need more help, and we need the weapons you've been promising
and we need more.
And the British have been quite forward leaning.
They have said that they want to and they're ready to provide the much-longer range missiles
that the Americans have so far not wanted to provide.
>> And German, also, which is -- not giving them so much money.
>> You know, if the nato strategy and the U.S. Strategy is for Putin to lose, then they
have to enable Ukraine to win.
The ballots are still being counted for Turkey's most consequential presidential election in
decades, which appears to be headed for a runoff.
Preliminary results show recep tayyip erdogan, the increasingly authoritarian leader who
will the country for 20 years is a leading but it's just below the 50% threshold needed
to secure the ballot, not an outright victory, kemal kilicdaroglu joins me live in its angle.
This probably is going to a runoff.
Where does that leave the two contenders here?
>> Well, you know, that is what it looks like this morning, max.
The electoral board saying they counted more than 99% of the ballots which were cast.
So far, they have president erdogan at 49.40%.
Then followed by kemal kilicdaroglu, the opposition candidate, 44.96%.
So the most likely scenario here, will be neither of them,
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here, will be neither of them, especially if you look at the numbers from president
erdogan, not achieving that 50 plus one required to win the presidency.
Most likely it is headed to a runoff in about two weeks time on may 28th.
Then we heard from both sides saying that they are ready for this.
The opposition, just a short time ago.
The main opposition party, the chp coming out and saying they aren't ready for this
runoff as we heard from their leader yesterday as well, this is the will of the Turkish people.
They are ready for this but also, they are trying to continue to sound hopeful and optimistic.
But no doubt, max, this has been a big blow for an opposition that for the first time,
came together under this unified banner, a coalition of the people, that they were presenting
one candidate to try and unseat president erdogan.
And really it was this feeling, that they might have this chance of doing so.
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chance of doing so.
They were promising people change.
They were promising to take this country back to being a real democracy, to reverse the
years of president erdogan's rule.
You had a lot of people who were really optimistic about this coalition, seeing them unified,
seeing them were galvanized and other.
Right now, a lot of people are disappointed, and on the other side, you have president
erdogan, who is not used to losing.
20 plus years of being at the top.
While he is not secure that 50%, while this is a likely scenario where it is headed towards
a runoff, again, they are still counting the rest of the ballots.
This from president erdogan as well is a win, max.
Because look at the situation in his country, look at how unhappy many Turks have been with
his leadership, there was a lot of speculation that this
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a lot of speculation that this might be it, this might be erdogan's last stand as many
has described it.
But he has managed to emerge from this point pretty much unscathed, despite the state of
the economy which is blamed on his policies.
Despite the criticism that him and his government got following that devastating earthquake,
with vhs asterisks initial rescue response to that, the lack of preparedness.
And still, look at these numbers.
He still has support of almost 50% of the country.
Max, what these results tell us