DHAKA: Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, has won the country's first direct presidential election in the first round after taking more that 50 percent of the vote, according to Turkey's election board.

Sunday's victory will extend Erdogan's more than 10-year rule over the country for another five years, reports Al-Jazeera.

"The provisional results show that Erdogan has the majority of the valid votes," High Election Board chairman Sadi Guven told a news conference in the capital Ankara.

"We have received more than 99 percent [of the votes]. Tomorrow we will announce the provisional results."

Erdogan declared victory by addressing his supporters from his party's headquarters in Ankara.

"Today national will and democracy have prevailed again… Today, greater Turkey has prevailed again... With the president being elected by popular vote, obstacles between Cankaya [the presidential palace] and the public have been lifted," he said, striking a conciliatory tone after a tense campaign period.

"Our political views, lifestyles, beliefs and ethnicities can be different, but we are all offspring of this country. We are all owners of this state... I will embrace all 70 million [Turks] as president."

The vote has been seen as a milestone in Turkish politics as Turks are electing their president by a popular vote for the first time in the country's history, bringing the office a new legitimacy.

In a brief statement to reporters in Istanbul, the main opposition candidate Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said: "I congratulate Mr Prime Minister and wish him success."

At midnight (9pm GMT) on Sunday, the prime minster had received 52 percent of the votes, Ihsanoglu on 38 percent and the third candidate Selahattin Demirtas taking 10 percent, after 99 percent of the votes had been counted, the semi-official Anatolia news agency said.
Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith talks to Utku Cakirozer, Ankara bureau chief of pro-opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper

Erdogan’s opponents accuse him of undermining the secular norms of Turkey and pushing it towards autocracy, while his supporters see him as a charismatic leader who changed the crisis-hit Turkey of the early 2000s into a prospering and respected country.

"For the first time in Turkish history, a strong political leader elected by the public is taking over the presidential seat," Ali Bayramoglu, a political analyst and columnist for the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper, told Al Jazeera.

"These are signals of Turkey moving away from parliamentary system in favour of the presidential system, a change Erdogan seeks."

The presidency in Turkey has relatively more powers compared to similar parliamentary governments.

The office has the power to promulgate laws or return them to the parliament for reconsideration, to call public referendums, to call new parliamentary elections, to appoint the prime minister, ministers and key bureaucrats.

Koray Caliskan, a professor at Istanbul's Bogazici University, believes that Turkey will now slip further away from democracy and the country will be more polarised in the future.

"In time, Turkey will look more and more similar to [President Vladimir] Putin's Russia. He will use all his presidential powers to tighten his grip on the country," he told Al Jazeera

BDST: 0920 HRS, AUG 11,2014