Tayyip Erdogan has become Turkey's first popularly-elected head of state after winning a presidential election on Sunday, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on his Twitter account.
"The chairman of the AK Party and the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has become the first president elected by the people," Bozdag wrote. His office confirmed the message was published on his official account.
Tayyip Erdogan said the Turkish people had "shown their will" in a presidential election which local media and allies said he had won, but stopped short of formally declaring victory, saying he would make a full statement later.
"I hope the final whistle will be blown by the referee, but the stands have made their decision. The people have shown their will," Erdogan told crowds of supporters at a convention centre in Istanbul, from where he will fly to the capital Ankara.
"The moment the results reach 100 percent we will call out from our balcony at our (party) headquarters," he said.
Later on, the main opposition candidate in Turkey's first presidential election congratulated Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan after results broadcast by Turkish media showed Erdogan had won.
"I congratulate Mr Prime Minister and wish him success," Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said in a brief statement to reporters in Istanbul.
After an election on Sunday that his opponents say may create an increasingly authoritarian state, broadcasters said Erdogan had 52.3 percent of the vote, 13 points more than his closest rival. Such a result would rule out a runoff round and seal Erdogan's place in history as Turkey's first directly elected head of state, a role expected to enhance his power.
Turkey has emerged as a regional economic force under Erdogan, who, as prime minister for more than a decade, has ridden a wave of religiously conservative support to transform the secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.
But his critics warn that a President Erdogan, with his roots in political Islam and intolerance of dissent, would lead the NATO member and European Union candidate further away from Ataturk's secular ideals.
The main opposition candidate, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, was on around 38.9 percent, while Selahattin Demirtas of the pro-Kurdish left-wing People's Democratic Party was on around 8.8 percent, according to television stations CNN Turk and NTV.
Turkey's electoral authorities are not officially due to announce their first results until Monday, with final figures due later in the week, but Erdogan, 60, is expected to make a victory address later on Sunday.
In a tea house in the working-class Istanbul district of Tophane, men watching election coverage on television praised Erdogan as a pious man of the people who had boosted Turkey's status both economically and on the international stage.
"Erdogan is on the side of the underdog. He is the defender against injustice. While the Arab world was silent, he spoke out against Israel on Gaza," said Murat, 42, a jeweller, who declined to give his family name.
"This country was ruined by the old politicians. They lied to us. They caused economic crises, the PKK violence," he said. Erdogan has opened a peace process with Kurdish PKK militants to end a conflict which has killed 40,000 people in 30 years.
The voting turnout, which exceeded 89 percent in March local elections, appeared to be low, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly observer George Tsereteli told reporters.
Opinion polls had put Erdogan, 60, far ahead of two rivals competing for a five-year term as president. Parliament has in the past chosen the head of state but this was changed under a law pushed through by Erdogan's government.
He has set his sights on serving two presidential terms, keeping him in power past 2023, the 100th anniversary of the secular republic. For a leader who refers frequently to Ottoman history in his speeches, the date has special significance.
A rapturous crowd cheered and chanted "Turkey is proud of you" and "President Erdogan" as he emerged from a school where he voted with his wife and children on the Asian side of Istanbul. He waved and shook people's hands.
"The (voters') decision will be crucial as an elected president and government will hand-in-hand carry our Turkey decisively towards 2023," he told reporters.
In his final campaign speech in the conservative stronghold of Konya on Saturday, he said the election would herald a "new Turkey" and "a strong Turkey is rising again from the ashes".
"Let's leave the old Turkey behind. The politics of polarisation, divisiveness and fear has passed its expiry date," he told a crowd of thousands.
His vision of a new Turkey left voters cold at one polling station in the capital Ankara, where many complained of deep polarisation under Erdogan and said only his AK Party loyalists had benefited from changes in the past decade.
"The freedom that he says has increased is for his own supporters. You can only be free if you support him. He has polarised this country in a way nobody has before," said Yucel Duranoglu, 45, who works for a private company.
REUTERS