Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu is set to retain power. Here he gives a speech after he and his wife Dilek voted in Istanbul. Photo: Murad Sezer / Reuters / NTB
Ekrem Imamoglu (CHP) was expected to be re-elected as mayor of Istabul for a long time. On Sunday night, he declared victory.
Imamoglu was challenged by a candidate from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party.
According to Reuters, Imamoglu was leading with over one million votes at 10:30 p.m. By then, 96 percent of the votes had been counted in Turkey’s largest city, writes the news agency.
The Turkish opposition party CHP took the mayor’s seat in Istanbul in 2019. It was a major defeat for the country’s president. Now the CHP is once again in a position to win.
– The local elections are not the end for us, but a turning point, Erdogan said at 11.30pm tonight.
The AKP is facing defeat in all of the country’s five largest cities, including Istanbul and Ankara.
If the CHP were to end up being the largest party in the local elections, it would be the first time in 35 years.
Erdogan has been Turkey’s leading politician for over two decades and his religiously oriented party has dominated Turkish politics during this period.
