ANP Productions | Source: ANP
Monday April 1, 2024 at 10:30 AM
Ankara
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party fared poorly in Sunday’s local elections. With 99.8 percent of the votes counted, the opposition CHP party is at 37.7 percent and Erdogan’s ruling party AKP is at 35.5 percent. In the previous local elections in 2019, the AKP won with almost 45 percent of the votes.
The opposition is doing well, especially in the cities. In Istanbul, the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) leads with 51.1 percent of the votes. Erdogan’s party follows with 39.6 percent. In the capital Ankara the difference is even greater, with 60.4 percent for the CHP compared to 31.7 percent for the AKP.
In those two cities the opposition was already in power, but the gains were greater than five years ago. In Istanbul, incumbent CHP mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu claimed victory on Sunday night. In Ankara, Mayor Mansur Yavas did the same.
Erdogan called the election results a turning point for his party. “Unfortunately, we did not achieve the results we had hoped for,” the president told a crowd in Ankara.