On the evening of Turkey’s most significant elections of the past two decades, Can Semercioğlu went to bed early. For the past seven years, Semercioğlu has worked for Teyit, the largest independent fact-checking group in Turkey, but that Sunday, May 14, was surprisingly one of the quietest nights he remembers at the organization.

Before the vote, opinion polls had suggested that incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was losing support due to devastating earthquakes in southeastern Turkey that killed nearly 60,000 people and a struggling…