Turkey’s most important opposition get together made enormous good points within the nation’s city areas in native elections Sunday, dealing a blow to longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who needed to retake management of these areas.
Per the state-run Anadolu Company, the Republican Folks’s Celebration, or CHP, gained the municipalities in almost half of Turkey’s 81 provinces.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan greets supporters at his get together’s Istanbul mayoral candidate Murat Kurum’s marketing campaign rally on March 29, 2024 in Istanbul, Turkey. (Burak Kara/Getty Photographs)
Incumbent Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of CHP, was main by a by a large margin in Turkey’s largest metropolis and financial hub, with greater than 80% of poll bins counted.
Mansur Yavas, the mayor of the capital, Ankara, retained his seat with a shocking 25-point distinction over his challenger, in keeping with the outcomes.
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In all, the CHP gained 37% of the votes nationwide, in comparison with 36% for the president’s get together, marking the CHP’s biggest electoral victory since Erdogan got here to energy 20 years in the past.
Republican Folks’s Celebration, or CHP, supporters collect outdoors the Metropolis Corridor in Ankara, Sunday, March 31, 2024. (AP Photograph/Ali Unal)
The vote was a key check of Erdogan’s recognition as he sought to win again management of key city the opposition gained in elections 5 years in the past. The CHP’s victory in Ankara and Istanbul in 2019 had shattered Erdogan’s aura of invincibility.
The principle battleground for the 70-year-old Turkish president was Istanbul, a metropolis of 16 million folks the place he was born and raised and the place he started his political profession as mayor in 1994.
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The consequence got here as a lift for the opposition, which was left divided and demoralized after a defeat to Erdogan and his ruling Islamic-oriented Justice and Growth Celebration, or AKP, in final yr’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
The Related Press contributed to this report.
