“Unfortunately, we did not achieve the results we wanted and hoped for,” Erdogan was quoted as saying France24 to his supporters outside the party headquarters in Ankara. “We will openly and self-critically evaluate the election results in the bodies of our party,” he added.
Preliminary results suggest that the AKP has been losing ground across Turkey. The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) won the most provinces, with its candidates narrowly defending the mayoral positions in the most populous Istanbul and the capital Ankara.
CHP’s Ekrem Imamoglu will continue to be the mayor of Istanbul, a metropolis with 16 million inhabitants. He won more than 51 percent of the vote. At the same time, the largest Turkish city is the place from where Erdogan bounced back to the presidency. He was in charge of Istanbul between 1994 and 1998.
Mansur Yavaš, who was supported by even more local residents, will lead Ankara even after Sunday’s elections. Specifically, he won over 70 percent of the vote. 75 percent of eligible voters took part in the municipal elections. At the national level, the CHP performed best with 37.6 percent. Two percent less people voted for the AKP.
Foreign media saw the local elections as a test of 70-year-old Erdogan’s popularity at a time when Turks have to cope with high living costs. The AKP failed despite having greater access to state media, as observers pointed out.
