The Turkish opposition is on the verge, on Sunday March 31, of winning a large victory across the country as far as Anatolia and of retaining Istanbul and Ankara, the two largest cities, on the evening of municipal elections which suggest a snub for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Shortly before midnight local time (11 p.m. in France), the outgoing mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, announced his re-election at the head of Turkey’s largest city, which he had conquered in 2019.
“We are in first position with a lead of more than a million votes”, he declared to the press, specifying that these results covered 96% of the ballot boxes. His supporters, laughing, were already massed in front of the municipal headquarters, drowned under a wave of Turkish red flags.
In Ankara, the CHP mayor, Mansur Yavas, immediately claimed victory while the counting was still in progress. “Those who have been ignored have sent a clear message to those who run this country”he said in front of a cheering crowd.
“The voters chose to change the face of Turkey”
“The voters chose to change the face of Turkey”, estimated the head of the CHP, Ozgur Ozel. In addition to Izmir, the country’s third city and stronghold of the CHP, and Antalya, where opposition supporters began to celebrate victory in the streets, the main opposition group is on the way to making a breakthrough in Anatolia. She was given the lead in provincial capitals long held by the AKP, according to still partial results.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power for more than two decades, had thrown all his weight into the campaign, particularly in Istanbul, the economic and cultural capital of the country where he was mayor in the 1990s and which had therefore shifted in opposition in 2019. The head of state was due to speak at 12:30 a.m. (11:30 p.m. in France), according to the presidency. A re-election of Mr. Imamoglu as head of the megacity would already launch him into the race for the 2028 presidential election.
The AKP candidates, on the other hand, were leading the race in several large cities in Anatolia (Konya, Kayseri, Erzurum) and the Black Sea (Rize, Trabzon), strongholds of President Erdogan, while the pro-Kurdish party DEM has a comfortable lead in several large cities in the Kurdish-majority southeast, including Diyarbakir, the informal capital of Turkey’s Kurds.