For the first time since its foundation in 2001, President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party came second in an elections, losing almost all Turkey’s major cities to the resurgent opposition Republican People Party.
Turkey’s main opposition party on Monday claimed a huge victory in Sunday’s local elections, securing almost all the main cities and giving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan his biggest defeat in more than two decades.
With 99.82 per cent of the votes counted, the first semi-official results published by the state-owned Anadolu Agency suggest that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, AKP lost to the include the country’s biggest city Istanbul, the capital Ankara, industrial centre Bursa, tourism hub Antalya and agricultural city Manisa to the social democratic Republican People’s Party, CHP.
“One-man rule is over! The nation has won! The nation has won!” Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and one of the main forces behind the CHP’s success, said in his victory speech on Monday.
The CHP’s victory came as a surprise ten months after it suffered a humiliating defeat against Erdogan and his AKP in presidential and general elections, which resulted in a leadership change in the opposition party and the collapse of the country’s opposition alliance.
However, running alone, the CHP led by Ozgur Ozel and backed by Imamoglu, got 37.74 per cent of the vote, leaving Erdogan’s AKP on 35.49 per cent.
The CHP not only won major cities in the elections but captured Erdogan’s strongholds in the Anatolia region, including Afyon, Kirsehir and Adiyaman.
The other success story of the local elections was the young Islamist leader Fatih Erbakan and his New Welfare Party, YRP, which received 6.19 per cent of the vote and won 59 municipalities including Sanliurfa and Yozgat.
“The YRP is the star and the winner of the elections,” Fatih Erbakan said on Monday.
President Erdogan, for the first time in history, had to speak to his supporters as the loser, punished voters who are unhappy with Turkey’s economic crisis and his policies.
“Unfortunately, we did not get the result we wanted and hoped for in the local election exam. We will take the necessary steps by objectively weighing the messages given by the nation at the ballot box on the scales of reason and conscience,” Erdogan said in his post-poll speech in Ankara.
“We will correct our mistakes and end our shortcomings,” he added.
Turkey has now had two major elections in less than a year. If there are no snap elections or referendums, the country’s next general and presidential elections will be held in 2028.
Observers and experts suggest that Erdogan and his ruling AKP have a major task by 2028 to fix the country’s economy and to recover from the damage done by Sunday’s local election defeat.
