Well, This Sucks

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has defeated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in the presidential runoff in Turkey.

There are no indications of any sort of fraud in the collection of ballots, but obviously the paucity of independent domestic media sources in Turkey hamstrung the opposition.

So did the selection of Kılıçdaroğlu, who also went hardcore nationalist during the runoff campaign, and was perceived as a weak and uninspiring candidate in some quarters. 

Finally, and I've not seen coverage of this, I think that anti-American sentiment in Turkey may have provided some of the margin of victory, Erdoğan has been aggressively pursuing a resolutely neutral position with regard to Russia and the United States and Chins.  (You may recall the freakout among the US foreign policy establishment [really the military industrial complex] over the purchase of the Russian S-400 SAM system)

That being said, it was not particularly close, 52.14%  — 47.86%, a 4.18% margin. 

A lot of this comes down to issues between secular Kemalists and Islamists in Turkish society, as well as an urban rural divide, and unlike his predecessors, Erdoğan did actually apply state resources to traditionally backward parts of Turkey.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has extended his two decades in power, securing victory over his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu after an unprecedented presidential runoff election, in a vote that reflected Turkey’s stark and persistent political polarisation.

With 99.43% of the vote counted, Turkey’s supreme election authority announced late on Sunday that Erdoğan had won 52.14% of the votes, while Kılıçdaroğlu received 47.86%. With a gap of more than 2m votes between candidates, the votes yet to be counted would not change the result, said Ahmet Yener, the head of the election board.

………

While the opposition holds mayorships in Turkey’s six largest cities, Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign appeared to run aground outside his party’s traditional enclaves on the Aegean coast and in metropolitan centres. In the Turkish provinces where Erdoğan’s rule previously catapulted many into the middle class, voters said they were unconvinced by the opposition’s campaign. 

It appears that the opposition is already blaming the Kurds for their loss.(At least on Twitter, for what it's worth.)

About the only policy suggestion that I have for the United States would be to get the nuclear bombs out of Incirlik, sooner rather than later.