There are signs of success for the opposition party CHP in the local elections in Turkey. According to partial results, she is ahead in the mayoral elections in Ankara and Istanbul. This is bad news for President Erdogan.
After the polling stations in Turkey have closed, the counting of votes will begin. However, the largest opposition party, the CHP, was already satisfied with the initial partial results of the local elections.
In the capital Ankara, the incumbent and CHP candidate Mansur Yavas has already declared himself the winner of the election based on the initial counting results. After counting 12.4 percent of the votes, Yavas has a share of 56.3 percent.
Imamoglu is probably ahead
In Istanbul, mayor and CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu said he was very happy with the interim result. According to the state news agency Anadolu, after the counting of almost 40 percent of the votes he got around 50 percent. His challenger, the candidate of the Islamic conservative AKP, Murat Kurum, has 41.3 percent of the vote. The opposition-affiliated news agency Anka saw Imamoglu at around 57 percent after counting more than half of the votes.
Before Imamoglu’s surprising election victory in 2019, Istanbul had been in the hands of the AKP and its predecessor parties for 25 years. Today’s Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself started his political career in the metropolis on the Bosphorus in 1994 when he was elected mayor there. He had made the recovery of Istanbul his election goal and sent his former environment minister Kurum into the race there.
Defeat would be a setback for Erdogan
According to early results reported by TRT, the CHP appeared to be in the lead in 35 of Turkey’s 81 provinces. The vote was seen as a barometer of the popularity of President Erdogan, who is trying to regain control of key urban areas he lost to the opposition in elections five years ago.
The CHP’s victory in Ankara and Istanbul shattered Erdogan’s aura of invincibility. Istanbul is particularly important for Erdogan, where he was born and raised. The popular Imamoglu is considered a possible challenger to Erdogan in the upcoming presidential elections.