Ramaphosa to attend president of Türkiye’s inauguration ceremony

President Cyril Ramaphosa will today attend the inauguration ceremony of President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Republic of Türkiye. The ceremony will take place in Türkiye’s capital Ankara.

Türkiye held its presidential and parliamentary elections on the 14th of May , followed by a runoff in the presidential election last Sunday.

President Erdogan was successfully re-elected in the runoff. A Presidential statement says Ramaphosa looks forward to working with Türkiye under President Erdogan to consolidate existing strong relations.

On Monday last week, his rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu said it was “the most unfair election in years” but did not dispute the outcome, which gave Erdogan a mandate to pursue policies that have polarised Türkiye and strengthened its position as a regional military power.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan wins run-off Presidential vote:

The election had been seen as Erdogan’s biggest political challenge, with the opposition confident of unseating him and reversing his policies after polls showed a cost-of-living crisis left him vulnerable. But he prevailed with 52.2% of the vote to Kilicdaroglu’s 47.8%. It reinforced Erdogan’s image of invincibility in the deeply divided NATO-member country, whose foreign, economic and security policy he has redrawn.

–Additional copy by Reuters–