2024-03-31T22:15:23+00:00
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/ The Turkish opposition announced, on Sunday, achieving a “major victory” in the municipal elections across the country, and preserving Istanbul and Ankara, at the expense of the ruling “Justice and Development” Party led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In his speech, Erdogan considered that “the local elections are not the end for us, but they are a turning point,” and “we will hold ourselves accountable after the results of the local elections, and we will study the messages issued by the people,” noting “the end of the elections that drained the economy.”
On Sunday, the state-run Turkish news agency Anadolu published official results after counting some ballot boxes, showing the opposition Republican People’s Party’s progress in major cities such as Izmir, Bursa, Antalya and Adana.
The Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who belongs to the Republican People’s Party, announced that he will retain his position, which he has held since 2019.
Imamoglu told the press, on Sunday evening, that “his party came first in Istanbul by more than a million votes,” adding: “We won the elections.”
In Ankara, the mayor, who also belongs to the Republican People’s Party, Mansur Yavaş, announced that he would retain his position while vote counting was still underway.
In addition to Izmir, the third city in the country and the stronghold of the Republican People’s Party, and Antalya, where opposition supporters began celebrating victory in the streets, the results indicate that the Republican People’s Party is on its way to achieving victory in Anatolia.
The party leads the partial counting results in regional capitals that the Justice and Development Party has long held.
On the other hand, the ruling Justice and Development Party’s candidates are leading in many of the major cities of Anatolia (Konya, Kayseri, Erd Rum) and the Black Sea (Rize, Trabzon), while the pro-Kurdish “Peoples’ Democratic Party” candidates are expected to win in the major cities of the southeast, which has a Kurdish majority. , most notably Diyarbakir.
Ozgur Ozil, head of the Republican People’s Party, the largest opposition group in Turkey, also considered that “voters chose to change the face of Turkey” after 22 years of dominance by the ruling Justice and Development Party, adding that voters “wanted to open the door to a new political climate in our country.” “.
