President Erdogan seen handing money to voters at polling station

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was seen handing out cash to voters at a polling station in an apparent breach of the law.

The Turkish president extended his two decade-long rule by another five years on Sunday, winning 52 per cent of the vote in the hotly contested run-off of the presidential elections, a preliminary count showed.

Earlier on Sunday, the country’s leader cast his ballot in Uskudar, a largely conservative Istanbul neighbourhood, on the Asian side of the Bosporus, where he was greeted by a rapturous welcome from supporters outside the school where he had voted.

Local residents crowded around Mr Erdogan, before stretching out their hands to him and chanting “Our president!” and “You’re so handsome!”

The 69-year-old was then seen retrieving cash from the pocket of his jacket and handing out a 200 lira (£8) banknote to an elderly woman in a headscarf. He then took out more notes and distributed them to other members of the crowd.

Legal experts say a recent change in legislation has made violations in campaigning more difficult to pin down and prosecute.

Election authorities have not commented on the widely shared video but insisted there were no serious violations during the Sunday vote.

During its final monitoring mission report, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe hailed the second round of voting as “well-run” and providing voters with “real political alternatives” but criticised it for “increasingly inflammatory and discriminatory language” during the campaign.

“Regretfully, the use of harsher rhetoric by both contesting sides that was discriminatory and inflammatory further polarised the political environment,” Farah Karimi, a Dutch politician who led the mission, told reporters on Monday.

Osman Can, a professor of constitutional law, described it as a clear violation.

“Distributing money in front of a school during the [pre-election] ban on political campaigning is unconstitutional as it amounts to encouraging voters to violate election restrictions,” said Dr Can, who was a member of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe from 2014-2018.

‘No one can slander the family’

Mr Erdogan who has ruled Turkey in different capacities since 2003 used an election night speech to lash out at his opponents, singling out the country’s LGBT community.

In an address to supporters outside his Istanbul residence, Mr Erdogan listed several opposition parties, asking the crowd: “Aren’t they pro-LGBT?”

He pledged to stand up for family values while he is in office.

“Family is sacred to us,” Mr Erdogan said.

“No one can slander the family.”

‘Demonising’ the LGBT community

Parents of Turkish LGBT people were visibly rattled by Mr Erdogan’s remarks.

“We watched Erdogan’s statements last night with concern,” Atilla Dirim, a 55-year old writer and father of a transgender woman, told The Telegraph.

“We are very worried. Now as LGBT families we are thinking: ‘What can we do to send our children out of this country?’”

Mr Erdogan’s remarks follow a years-long hostility toward the LGBT community that has seen the country go from holding a 100,000-strong gay pride event in central Istanbul in 2014 to such gatherings being banned altogether.

Mr Dirim said the ruling party has been “demonising” the LGBT community with recurrent hate speech.

“What we do next will be crucial because we want our children to have an equal and dignified life,” the Ankara-based writer said.

“We will continue to fight for our children.”

On Monday, Sema Yakar, founder of LISTAG, an NGO that provides psychological and legal support for parents of LGBT children, said she and other families were alarmed by Mr Erdogan’s speech.

“We don’t want our children to be targeted,” Ms Yakar, whose gay son died in a car accident five years earlier, told The Telegraph.

“The government has always used the LGBTQ community as a scapegoat to divert attention from other issues.”