Who among the following leaders recently won the election to the office of the President of Turkey?
- (a)Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
- (b)Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu
- (c)Ahmet Necdet Sezer
- (d)Abdullah Gül
Correct — A, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey went to the polls on 14 May 2023 and no candidate crossed fifty per cent, so a runoff followed on 28 May in which Erdoğan took 52.18 per cent — 27,834,589 votes — against 47.82 per cent, 25,504,724 votes, for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu of the Republican People's Party, who led a six-party opposition alliance. It was Erdoğan's eleventh consecutive election victory, a run that goes back to his election as Mayor of Istanbul in 1994, and it extended a presidency he had held since 2014 into a term running to 2028. The other three names are all real Turkish politicians, which is the difficulty: two of them have actually been President, just earlier.
- (b)Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu — The challenger, not the winner. He led the opposition alliance, lost the runoff with 47.82 per cent, and was voted out as leader of the Republican People's Party in November 2023.
- (c)Ahmet Necdet Sezer — A former President of Turkey, but of an earlier era — he held the office from 2000 to 2007, before the presidency became directly elected.
- (d)Abdullah Gül — President from 2007 to 2014, and Erdoğan's predecessor. He was not a candidate in 2023.
Turkey moved from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency after a referendum in 2017, so the President is now both head of state and head of government, and is elected directly for a five-year term. A candidate needs an absolute majority; if nobody reaches it in the first round, the top two go to a runoff two weeks later. The 2023 election was held in the shadow of a severe cost-of-living crisis and of the February 2023 earthquakes in the south-east, which is why it was widely expected to be close.
Three of the four options are men who have genuinely occupied or contested the Turkish presidency, so this is not a question that can be answered by eliminating implausible names. The reliable anchor is the sequence: Sezer to 2007, Gül from 2007 to 2014, Erdoğan from 2014 onwards. Anyone who holds that chain can see that the two earlier names are out of period. The second anchor is the runoff itself — the very fact that the election went to a second round on 28 May 2023 is what made it international news, and the man who won that round was the incumbent. A small note on the printed page: the opposition leader's name appears in the paper as 'Kiliçdaroğlu', where Turkish orthography writes Kılıçdaroğlu with the dotless letter. It is incidental and changes nothing about the question.
- The first round was held on 14 May 2023 and produced no outright majority; the runoff followed on 28 May 2023.
- Erdoğan won the runoff with 52.18 per cent against 47.82 per cent for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
- It was Erdoğan's eleventh consecutive election win, counting from the Istanbul mayoralty in 1994.
- He has held the presidency since 2014; Abdullah Gül held it from 2007 to 2014 and Ahmet Necdet Sezer from 2000 to 2007.
- Kılıçdaroğlu was removed as leader of the Republican People's Party in November 2023.
- Picking a former President because the name is familiar; check the period, not just the country.
- Assuming the leading candidate of the first round has already won — Turkey requires an absolute majority.
- Confusing the President of Turkey with the Prime Minister; the office of Prime Minister was abolished in 2018.
As a straight 'who won the recent election in country X' item, with former holders of the same office offered as distractors.
Kenneth Kaunda, who died recently at the age of 97, was the former president of
- (a) Brazil
- (b) Mexico
- (c) Zambia
- (d) South Sudan
Answer(c) Zambia
The same pattern from the NDA paper — a president in the news matched to his country. Both papers draw this kind of item from the twelve months before the exam.
CDS_GK_2021_II_Q1112021President Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated recently, was the President of which one of the following countries?
- (a) Dominican Republic
- (b) Haiti
- (c) Guatemala
- (d) Cuba
Answer(b) Haiti
The same slot in the paper, two years earlier — a head of state in the international news, identified against three neighbouring countries. CDS reliably carries one or two of these, so the year's major elections and leadership changes are worth a list of their own.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In the Turkish presidential election of 2023, a second round became necessary because
- (a)The result of the first round was annulled
- (b)No candidate secured an absolute majority in the first round
- (c)The two leading candidates tied
- (d)Turnout in the first round fell below the legal minimum
Answer(b) No candidate secured an absolute majority in the first round, so the top two contested a runoff on 28 May 2023.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Following its constitutional referendum of 2017, Turkey adopted which form of government?
- (a)A parliamentary republic
- (b)An executive presidential system
- (c)A constitutional monarchy
- (d)A semi-presidential system with a Prime Minister
Answer(b) An executive presidential system — the President became both head of state and head of government, and the office of Prime Minister was abolished.