Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu will both be courting support from Sinan Ogan of the right-wing ATA Alliance after the relative newcomer’s surprisingly strong showing in Sunday’s vote, analyst Soner Cagaptay has told Al Jazeera.

“He got enough votes to be a spoiler and deny either of the candidates a 50 percent outright victory, likely forcing the election into a run-off,” said Cagaptay, who leads the Turkey Research Program at the Washington Institute in Washington DC.

Cagaptay said both men would be trying to court Ogan, but it was the more conservative Erdogan who probably had the upper hand.

The Turkish president’s supporters have been holding a boisterous rally outside the AK party’s headquarters in Ankara as they await results.

They’ve been waving Turkish flags and setting off flares, and the mood seems celebratory.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu has promised that if the presidential election goes to a run-off on May 28, he will win.

“If our nation says second round, we will absolutely win the second round,” he told reporters.

“This will for change in society is higher than 50 percent.”

President Erdogan has said that he is far ahead of Kilicdaroglu in the presidential election, although he is not sure of his victory in the first round.

Erdogan, speaking at his party’s headquarters in Ankara, said he was 2.6 million votes ahead of the main opposition candidate.

“Throughout our political life, without exception, we have always respected the decision of the national will. We respect it in this election as well, and we will respect it in the next elections,” he said.

Erdogan also said he expected this number to rise with official results, adding: “We believe we will win in first round.”

Presidential candidate Sinan Ogan has said that vote counting is not being done in a healthy environment for the ballots cast abroad.

“We have heard that some manipulations are carried out in the overseas vote counting processes,” Ogan tweeted.

He warned the country’s election board to “take the necessary measures immediately and ensure that the vote counting processes are carried out quickly”.

He added: “In addition, we will not allow a fait accompli with a manipulation of foreign votes. Do not stress the environment. This is up to the second round.”

Tensions rise over differing reports of which presidential candidate was in the lead in knife-edge elections.

Read about Al Jazeera’s report from Istanbul here.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu has said that the Erdogan camp keeps objecting to the results from certain ballot boxes to block the system.

“There are ballot boxes that have been objected to six times, 11 times,” he said, adding: “You are blocking the will of Turkey.”

Kilicdaroglu said: “You cannot prevent what will happen through objections. We will not allow a fait accompli.”

He urged Erdogan to stop “perception management” and the national election board to act responsibly.

For all the latest results from Turkey’s presidential election, visit our live results page here.

Turkey’s lira has slipped to a new two-month low as financial markets kicked off trading in the wake of the elections, with the race appearing headed for a run-off.

The currency weakened to 19.70 to the dollar before retracing some of its losses to 19.66, on track for its worst session since early November.

That was not far off the 19.80 level it hit in early March following deadly earthquakes in February.

Ahmet Yener, the head of the Turkish election board, has said that 71.64 percent of the votes within the country and 18.76 percent of the votes from abroad were entered into its system.

A total of 69.12 percent of the votes have been entered in the system, he added.

There are no delays in the entry of data from the presidential and parliamentary elections, he repeated.

President Erdogan, who was reported to be in the capital Ankara by Turkish state media earlier in the day, has made a surprise appearance in Istanbul.

He greeted supporters as he left his residence in the Istanbul district of Uskudar.

Al Jazeera’s Amr Halabi, reporting from Kahramanmaras, says big celebrations are ongoing in a central square in the city.

“The opposition is still winning in Diyarbakir and Adana. AKP is maintaining a lead in the other nine provinces affected by the earthquakes,” he said.

For all the latest results from Turkey’s presidential election, visit our live results page here.

Sinan Ogan, the presidential race’s third candidate backed by the right-wing Ata Alliance, foresaw the polls going to a second round.

At this time, Ogan said, there would be no announcement on who the alliance is going to support in the run-off.

He said that will take place after internal deliberations.

Ogan appears to be gathering more votes than expected, surpassing five percent.

Meral Aksener, leader of the second-largest party in Kilicdaroglu’s opposition alliance, has said their rivals were working to alter the public’s perception in another election.

“But we will not take it, because we have seen this movie many times before,” the IYI Party leader added in a tweet, apparently criticising the results reported by the state-run Anadolu Agency.

“We will chase every vote our nation cast until the end. We are here until morning! Do not worry; all is well – the sun is in its place! WE ARE WINNING!”

With 89 percent of the ballot boxes opened, preliminary unofficial results show President Erdogan’s share of votes at 49.94 percent, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

As things stand, the Turkish presidential election is going for a run-off on May 28.

Ahmet Yener, the head of the Turkish election board, has said that the institution entered 47.08 percent of the votes within the country and 12.6 percent of the votes from abroad into its system.

There are no delays in the entry of data from the presidential and parliamentary elections, he said.

Al Jazeera’s Abdelazeem Mohammed, reporting from Istanbul, says with only 15 percent of votes left to count in Istanbul, Kilicdaroglu is leading “by a tiny margin”.

“Kilicdaroglu received the highest number of the votes in his hometown Tunceli,” he said.

Mohammed added that most cities in central Turkey have voted for Erdogan, while the east and west of Turkey did not support the incumbent president. In central Turkey, Eskişehir is the only city that voted for Kilicdaroglu.

Reporting from the AK Party’s HQs in Ankara, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar says supporters there are optimistic of a victory even there is a runoff.

“If it goes to a second round, the next two weeks are definitely going to be quite tense because Turkey is not used to runoffs,” Serdar added.

Erdogan’s lead in Turkey’s election continues to shrink: It is now at 50.01 percent, according to Anadolu Agency, with almost 86 percent of the ballot boxes opened.

Kilicdaroglu sits second with 44.1 percent.