Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday evening that the preliminary results of the local elections are a turning point for his party. The opposition is leading in many municipalities, including in the country’s two largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara.
Observers are even talking about a historically bad result for the Islamic-conservative AKP. “Unfortunately, we did not achieve the results we had hoped for,” Erdogan said from his party’s headquarters in the capital Ankara, to an unusually quiet crowd. He promised to respect the results.
In Ankara, Mayor Mansur Yavas, of the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), is in the lead with more than 56 percent. Shortly after the first results, he claimed victory. In Istanbul, the incumbent mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, also from the CHP, leads with almost 50 percent of the votes, against around 42 percent for Murat Kurum, the candidate of the ruling party. President Erdogan’s AKP.
“We are in first place with a lead of more than a million votes. We won the election,” Imamoglu told reporters, adding that 96 percent of votes had been counted.
Hope of the opposition
Erdogan won the last presidential elections last year. That was a setback for the opposition, which had hoped to continue the gains from 2019 and unite behind a candidate. That could now be Imamoglu. If he gets a second term as mayor, there is a good chance that he will become the opposition’s presidential candidate in 2028.
Erdogan said earlier this month that these municipal elections will be the last elections in which he will actively participate. He is therefore no longer a candidate for the 2028 presidential elections. He has been president of Turkey since 2014, before which he had been in power as prime minister for eleven years.
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Tags: Turkish President Erdogans party big loser local elections
