Erdoğan’s party loses Ankara in Turkish local elections blow
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.
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