A harsh defeat for Erdoğan’s party in Turkey – 2024-04-01 18:56:48

Supporters of incumbent mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu celebrated the election results early Monday. ERDEM SAHIN

The local elections held in Turkey over the weekend seem to have been a significant setback for the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP party.

More than 1,100 local elections were held in the country on Sunday, where the greatest interest was focused on the results of the largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara. Erdoğan’s party experienced a defeat in the elections in both cities, thus also losing the battles for the mayor’s positions.

Turkey’s largest opposition party, the CHP, won both in Istanbul, Ankara and the country’s third largest city, İzmir.

– The faith of our citizens in us has been rewarded, comments the sitting mayor of Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu matter after securing his victory.

Similar excitement about the results was also heard in Ankara.

– The elections are over, we will continue to serve you, mayor of the capital Mansur Yavas said according to news agency AFP.

President Erdoğan also commented on his party’s defeat, saying that the Islamist and conservative AKP respects the will of the people.

– Unfortunately, we have not achieved the results we wanted, the president commented when speaking to his supporters in Ankara.

“The beginning of a new era”

Erdoğan’s own path to power in his country also started in local elections, when he was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994.

In the elections seen this past weekend, the president drove the AKP to victory in the same city by supporting his former environment minister Murat Kurumi for the position of mayor. AKP has not governed Istanbul since 2019.

Casting his own vote on Sunday, Erdoğan commented on his party’s goals.

– These elections mark the beginning of a new era for our country, he said.

However, the results of the vote counting have told the opposite story than the president would have hoped. After the opposition party CHP won the mayoralty of Istanbul, some experts have already pegged İmamoğlu as the next viable challenger to Erdoğan in the 2028 presidential election.

– Whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey, commented an analyst from the Turkish Konda research institute Erman Bakirci matter to AFP.