Trend: AKP loses in Istanbul
Erdogan probably missed his target in the Turkey election
March 31, 2024, 7:51 p.m
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The Turkish president is particularly aware of the rural parts of his country behind him. But he also wants to score points in the big cities in the local elections. Without success. According to the first counting results, opposition candidates are in the lead in Istanbul and Ankara.
In the local elections in Turkey, a trend is emerging in favor of the incumbents in Istanbul and Ankara. After almost 20 percent of the votes were counted, the incumbent mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, received 49.6 percent of the vote, while his main rival, supported by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had 41.6 percent, state media reported. In Ankara, Mayor Mansur Yavas had a share of 56.3 percent after counting 12.4 percent of the votes.
Both mayors belong to the opposition CHP party and had to prevail in the election against challengers from Erdogan’s ruling AKP party.
Before Imamoglu’s surprising election victory in 2019, Istanbul had been in the hands of the AKP and its predecessor parties for 25 years. Erdogan himself started his political career in the metropolis on the Bosphorus in 1994 when he was elected mayor there.
The president had made the recovery of Istanbul his election goal and sent his former environment minister Murat Kurum into the race there. He had also hoped for an AKP victory in the opposition-run cities of Ankara and Izmir.