{"id":38266,"date":"2019-04-01T04:23:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T04:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38266"},"modified":"2019-04-01T04:23:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T04:23:00","slug":"erdogan-bloc-loses-ankara-imamoglu-says-he-won-istanbul-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38266","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan bloc ‘loses Ankara’; Imamoglu says he won Istanbul polls"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Istanbul, Turkey\u00a0<\/strong>–\u00a0<\/span>Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party (AKP) and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have both said they narrowly won Istanbul’s mayoral elections on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in Istanbul, CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, citing his party’s data, said he had won by nearly 28,000 votes. Minutes later, the AKP provicial head in Istanbul said his party’s candidate, Binali Yildirim, had won by around 4,000 votes.<\/p>\n

In Ankara, preliminary results showed that\u00a0Nation Alliance candidate Mansur Yavas\u00a0had garnered 50.6 percent, with 92 percent of the votes counted. He was\u00a0followed by\u00a0Mehmet Ozhaseki, the\u00a0People’s Alliance nominee in the capital,\u00a0with 47.2 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the third-largest city, Izmir, the Nation Alliance candidate Mustafa Tunc Soyer was in the lead with 58.1 percent. Nihat Zeybekci, the candidate of Erdogan’s bloc, had 38.5 percent.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, with 91.7 percent of the\u00a0provincial votes\u00a0counted, the People’s Alliance, which is comprised of the AK Party and the\u00a0far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP),<\/span> had secured 51.7 percent of the votes.<\/p>\n

It was followed by Nation Alliance, a coalition made up by the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) and\u00a0the\u00a0right-wing Good Party<\/span>, with 37.6 percent.<\/p>\n

Erdogan vows economic reforms<\/h2>\n

The polls posed a major challenge for Erdogan given a backdrop of high inflation and rising unemployment sparked by a major currency crisis last year.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at a news conference in Istanbul,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Erdogan on Sunday acknowledged that<\/span>\u00a0his party had lost control in a number of cities, and pledged that he would focus on carrying out economic reforms.<\/p>\n

Erdogan, who was elected last year as the country’s first executive president,\u00a0<\/span>said the next polls would be held in June 2023, adding that Turkey would carefully implement a “strong economic programme” without compromising on free-market rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Murat Yetkin, a Turkish political analyst, told Al Jazeera that if “the\u00a0<\/span>Erdogan-led AK Party-MHP alliance loses Istanbul [along with Ankara] as well, that means loss of control over five major cities in Turkey.”<\/p>\n

“Even if Istanbul, with 11 million voters, is won with a few thousand votes, it will be perceived as a major loss,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The results also show that the executive presidential system, which was designed to avoid coalitions, has led to a de facto coalition, since the AK Party cannot maintain majority without its symbiotic partnership with MHP.”<\/p>\n

Ozgur Dilber, a CHP volunteer, said the results showed that the AK Party’s popularity was waning – even if\u00a0 Erdogan’s bloc won in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

“To me, the results are a proof that the number of voters who want change is increasing,” he told Al Jazeera outside the party’s election monitoring office.<\/p>\n

Focus on economy, security<\/h2>\n

Earlier this month, official statistics showed that in the last two quarters of 2018 the Turkish economy slipped into its first recession in a decade, as inflation and interest rates soared due to the currency meltdown.<\/p>\n

In February, inflation stood at just under 20 percent, while the Central Bank’s main interest rate is currently 24 percent.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the lead-up to\u00a0Sunday’s vote<\/a>, the People’s Alliance sought to link the local polls to internal and external risks threatening the country’s security.<\/p>\n

Erdogan has often blamed foreign powers and “speculators” for the currency fluctuations and other economic woes faced by\u00a0Turkey<\/a>\u00a0– a message he repeated this week.<\/p>\n

For its part, the main opposition alliance has focused its campaign on the economic situation and its effect on citizens.<\/p>\n

It also used Turkish flags in their campaigns, rather than party banners, in an apparent bid to attract voters from different backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Follow Umut Uras on Twitter\u00a0<\/strong>@Um_Uras<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Istanbul, Turkey\u00a0–\u00a0Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party (AKP) and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have both said they narrowly won Istanbul’s mayoral elections on Sunday. Speaking to reporters in Istanbul, CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, citing his party’s data, said he had won by nearly 28,000 votes. Minutes later, the AKP provicial head in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}