President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party has submitted objections to local election results in all 39 Istanbul districts, the party’s provincial head said yesterday, after results showed a narrow victory for the main opposition candidate.
The AK Party is on track to lose control of Turkey’s two biggest cities, its commercial hub of Istanbul and the capital Ankara, in a surprise election setback that may complicate Erdogan’s plans to combat recession.
In Istanbul, the mayoral candidate of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Ekrem Imamoglu, and his AKP rival, ex-prime minister Binali Yildirim, both said on Monday Imamoglu was around 25,000 votes ahead. Istanbul has an estimated total population of 15 million. The AKP had previously said it would use its right to object to the results where there were voting irregularities, and the party’s Istanbul head said on Tuesday that objections had been submitted by the 3 p.m. (1200 GMT) deadline for appeals.