ANKARA, Turkey — In a presidential election with huge implications for Turkey’s future, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed victory Sunday, with 53 percent of the votes.
With 96 percent of the vote counted, Erdogan’s total was far ahead of the 31 percent won by his main contender, the secular candidate Muharrem Ince, the Associated Press reported.
Kurdish candidate Selahattin Demirtas, who ran his campaign from prison where he is being held pending trial on terrorism-related charges, garnered 8 percent.
In televised remarks from Istanbul, Erdogan said ‘‘the nation has entrusted to me the responsibility of the presidency and the executive duty.’’
He also declared victory for the People’s Alliance, an electoral cooperation between his ruling Justice and Development Party and the small Nationalist Movement Party, saying they had a majority in the 600-member Parliament.
The state news agency Anadolu reported that the Justice and Development Party secured 45 percent of the vote.
A pro-Kurdish party passed a critical electoral threshold to enter the Parliament, Anadolu said. The Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, captured 10 percent of the vote. That will give it 67 seats, making it the third-largest party in Parliament.
Erdogan, 64, needed more than the 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff election on July 8.
The election was seen as a referendum on the president’s rule, with many voters expressing concerns about what they say is Erdogan’s growing authoritarian streak and a struggling economy, which they blamed on corruption and mismanagement.
Erdogan’s anti-Western drift recently has raised alarms among Turkey’s putative allies, with potentially grave consequences for cooperation within NATO, security in Iraq and Syria, and control of immigration flows into Europe.
Turkey has continued to cooperate with its Western partners on counterterrorism efforts, but Erdogan has tested the NATO alliance by drawing closer to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, to the point of purchasing an advanced Russian missile defense system and planning a Russian-built nuclear reactor in Turkey.
There were scattered reports of violence Sunday. Officials of the Iyi (Good) Party said a party official had been shot and killed, and two others injured, in a dispute at a polling station in Erzurum in eastern Turkey.
The pro-Kurdish opposition group lodged official complaints of armed groups threatening voters and irregular mass voting in the southeastern town of Suruc, near the Syrian border.
By and large, though, the elections were conducted without widespread problems or irregularities, opposition officials at party call centers said. There were problems in some villages, but the bulk of voters live in the cities, and voting there was orderly, said Akcaru, a cofounder of the Good Party who was monitoring the vote.
Ince had urged his supporters to keep an eye on the polls until every vote had been counted.
“Do not ever leave the ballot boxes,’’ Ince said in comments to television cameras outside the Supreme Election Board headquarters in the capital, Ankara, after polling stations closed. But he also called for calm. “I do not want any intemperance about the results,’’ he said.
Erdogan called the election two months ago in hopes of scoring a big win that he maintained would be a turning point for the country, allowing him to create a stronger, more powerful state. But it was the fear of that consolidation of power, along with growing economic turmoil, that seemed to propel the opposition, which presented a unified front for the first time in years.
As the election approached, the opposition showed surprising strength, with Ince and other candidates attracting huge crowds as they warned about the country’s descent into authoritarianism.
Fighting the juggernaut of Erdogan’s party machine, the opposition had aimed to at least weaken the president, either by forcing him into a runoff or by robbing his Justice and Development Party of a majority in Parliament.
By creating an alliance, the opposition parties allowed a small Islamist party to get around the 10 percent parliamentary threshold, and collaborated behind the scenes to help the pro-Kurdish party pass the threshold.
Bekir Agirdir, founder of the polling firm Konda, predicted that Erdogan would struggle to rule the country. His constitutional changes to create an executive presidency in 2016 were approved narrowly, 51 percent to 49 percent.
“He cannot rule the remaining 49 percent,’’ Agirdir said.
Since a failed coup in July 2016, Erdogan has displayed a growing authoritarian streak, ruling by presidential decree and imposing a state of emergency.
The new presidential system will codify the executive powers he has already been exercising to a large extent under the state of emergency.
Under the new system, the prime minister’s office will be abolished and the Cabinet will be composed of presidential appointees rather than elected lawmakers. Parliament’s powers are reduced, including oversight of the budget.
Under the constitutional changes, Erdogan can run for a second term as president — and a third, if he were to call an early election — opening the possibility that he could stay in office beyond 2030.
