Turkish voters began voting this morning to elect their mayors: a local ballot that will have proof value for the Erdogan administrationwhich intends to take back the “national treasure” Istanbul.
The first polling stations opened in the east of the country at 7am local time, while in the west and in large cities such as Ankara and Istanbul the operations began an hour later. At 70 years old, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has put all his stature as a statesman into his election campaign, plowing through his country of 85 million inhabitants together with the candidates of his Islamic-conservative AKP party.
Incidents broke out on the sidelines of the electoral process not far from the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, in the south-east, where at least one person was killed and 12 others injured. This was announced by the Turkish Ministry of Health. “Struggles broke out between two groups on Sunday during the vote”, in which firearms were also used, “and there were one dead and 12 injured” in a village 30 kilometers from the capital of the Kurdish province of the same name .
“Istanbul will return to its best days, now it is in a dead end but we will save it.” The most important challenge for Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the local elections in Turkey is being played in the city on the Bosphorusthe economic center of the country where he was mayor in 1994, launching his career, which his political movement lost five years ago after more than twenty years.
“We will show respect for the will of the people but I am sure that no one will allow another five years to be wasted,” the Turkish leader said, promising that he will accept the results, unlike what happened in 2019, when the candidate of the main opposition party won Chp, Ekrem Imamoglu. The objections were accepted and new consultations were held which decreed an even heavier defeat for Erdogan.
“I voted for Imamoglu five years ago and I will do so again, he worked very well,” Tugrul, a 47-year-old manager of a small company in Kasimpasa, the working-class neighborhood in central Istanbul where Erdogan was born and raised, told ANSA. “Here most people support the current president but I have never seen such a well-attended opposition demonstration in the neighbourhood, it means that we will win”, says the man, during a rally in Kasimpasa in Imamoglu, who is running again and managed to fill the square of the sultan’s quarter.
“After having won again in Istanbul, I hope that Imamoglu can be the candidate for the 2028 presidential elections and with him we hope to be able to change this country”, says Tugrul, while in Istanbul a head-to-head between Imamoglu and Erdogan’s candidate is expected, the former Minister of Environment and Urbanization Murat Kurum. “They say ‘we will find a solution’ but then the problems remain.
The public transport situation is unsustainable, what would you do if you were late for your daughter’s birthday just because the metro isn’t working? I hope they leave and never come back!”, says Yasemin, a 45-year-old employee, as she goes to one of Erdogan’s latest rallies, which attracts large participation even if there is not the huge crowd seen at the demonstrations in Turkish leader during last year’s presidential campaign. Traffic, lack of parking, lack of buildings prepared to face an earthquake and increasingly high rent prices are the main problems of Istanbul according to the voters of the Turkish leader, who has dominated the electoral campaign with dozens of rallies, broadcast almost to unified networks throughout the country, where the candidates he supports appear on stage only at the end of the president’s speech and speak for a few minutes.
According to the findings, Erdogan will have no problems maintaining control of central Anatolia. The Aegean and Mediterranean coast will remain in the hands of the opposition, with polls showing Mansur Yavas as the favorite in Ankara, where he already won in 2019, wresting the capital from Erdogan’s party which had governed it since 2004. The pro-Kurdish and left-wing Dem could dominate in the south-east, on the border with Syria and Iraq, where it has already triumphed in 2014 and 2019 but many of the elected mayors were then accused of links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), believed by Ankara terrorist, and replaced with government-appointed administrators.
“What this government has to offer the Kurdish region is poverty and lack of respect for their political will,” Ceylan Akça Cupolo, a 38-year-old Democratic MP, told ANSA, accusing the appointed administrators of corruption and of having sold assets of the municipalities, impoverishing the region. The removal of the mayors elected in the two previous administrations has led to a decline in turnout in the region but the deputy believes that her party will win again, also conquering other provinces.
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