Expatriate Turks who helped to re-elect President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan do not belong in Austria, a leading far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) official said, revealing the rising anti-Erdoğan sentiments in yet another xenophobic statement.
After a partial vote count showed that 72 percent of Turks in Austria backed Erdoğan, deputy FPÖ chief Johann Gudenus said that "this election result proves once again that the integration of thousands of Turks has been a miserable failure."
"All those who voted for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Turkish presidential election are clearly better off in Turkey than in Austria," he said in a statement.
Some 270,000 people with Turkish roots live in Austria. Among them, nearly 107,000 were eligible to vote, and around half of these cast their ballots.
On Sunday, Erdoğan secured re-election in snap presidential polls, receiving more than 52 percent of the votes — enough for a win in the first round. Following the election, Turkey will switch to the presidential system of government, which was approved at a popular referendum in April 2017.
In Austrian capital Vienna, Turkish citizens filled a conference hall to follow the election and started celebrating once Turkey's Supreme Election Council (YSK) lifted the ban on publishing election results after polling ends.
They were waving Turkish flags and singing songs to celebrate Erdoğan and his party's victory.
