Erdoğan’s party loses Ankara in Turkish local elections blow

By Dilip -
For the first time in his 16 years in office, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been punished at the ballot box as his ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) lost control of the capital, Ankara, in fiercely fought local elections. In a further potential blow, claims of an AKP victory in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and commercial centre, were challenged by the opposition.

The AKP’s loss in Ankara to the secular People’s Republican Party (CHP) mayoral candidate, Mansur Yavaş, ended 25 years of the Islamist party’s dominance over the capital and sent shockwaves throughout the rest of the country. In Istanbul, the main opposition bloc candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, said in the early hours of Monday that he had won by nearly 28,000 votes over the AKP candidate and former prime minister, Binali Yıldırım. But minutes later, the AKP provincial head in Istanbul said Yıldırım had won by about 4,000 votes.

What should have been routine municipality elections morphed into a referendum on Erdoğan’s decade and a half in office as economic woes began to bite into his support. Erdoğan’s leadership has been marked by consistently strong economic growth, but last year’s currency crisis triggered an official recession last month. Inflation is hovering at about 20%, sending the cost of living soaring for working-class AKP voters.

Although the president was not on the ballot, he had campaigned tirelessly in an attempt to draw attention away from the economy. He framed the local elections as a matter of “national survival”, accusing opposition parties of links to terrorism and blaming inflation on foreign powers seeking to undermine the country.... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/01/erdogan-party-loses-ankara-in-turkish-local-elections-blow

see also
More posts on Erdogan
Zehra Dogan - I was just released from prison in Turkey because of my art, but I refuse to be silenced
Anti-corruption lawyer Zuzana Caputova becomes Slovakia’s first female president
Samjhauta Express blast case verdict: ‘Who will answer for death of my five children?’
Facebook live-streamed mass murder. Zuckerburg and Erdogan both profited from it. Capitalism, xenophobia, communal politics in a deadly mix

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