Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday recognized the opposition’s historic victory in municipal elections, which he said was a “turning point” for his camp, which has been in power since 2002, AFP comments.

The tally of almost 99% of votes at the national level confirms that the Turkish opposition has caused the biggest electoral disaster in the last two decades for the AKP (Islamist-Conservative) party of the head of state.

The main opposition party, the CHP (Social Democrats), won Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey’s two largest cities, and captured many others, including Bursa, a large industrial city in the northwest that has been under AKP control since 2004.

The announcement of the final results by the Supreme Electoral Commission (YSK), expected on Monday, will confirm these results, which have already been consolidated by the main stakeholders, including the head of state.

From his party headquarters in Ankara and before a subdued, unusually silent crowd, Turkey’s president promised to “respect the nation’s decision.”

Shortly before that, the acting mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, a media-attractive man over fifty, announced his re-election at the head of Turkey’s largest city, which he conquered in 2019, without even waiting for the announcement. official results.

“Tonight, democracy will spread (…) in the markets, on the streets, in the universities, in the cafes and restaurants of Istanbul,” the mayor of the city declared before tens of thousands of supporters, very happy, gathered in front of the headquarters of the city hall under a wave of red Turkish flags and smoke bombs .

In Ankara, CHP Mayor Mansur Yavas also claimed victory by a wide margin, telling an enthusiastic crowd that “those who have been ignored have sent a clear message to those who run this country.”

“Voters have decided to change the face of Turkey,” CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said.

In addition to Izmir (west), the country’s third city and CHP stronghold, and Antalya (south), where opposition guerrillas began celebrating victory in the streets, the main opposition formation made impressive progress in Anatolia.

According to near-final results that surprised observers, she is leading the race in provincial capitals long held by the AKP.

President Erdoğan, 70, who has been in power for 21 years, has been personally involved in the campaign, particularly in Istanbul, the country’s “pearl”, its economic and cultural capital, where he was mayor in the 1990s and which defected to the opposition in in 2019.

But the commitment of the head of state, who declared at the beginning of March that these elections were “the last for him”, was not enough.

“We need a balance at least at the local level against the government,” Serhan Solak, 56, an Ankara resident who came to vote for Mansur Yavas, the incumbent CHP mayor, told AFP.

AKP candidates, however, remained in the lead in several major cities in Anatolia (Konya, Kayseri, Erzurum) and the Black Sea (Rize, Trabzon), strongholds of President Erdogan, while the pro-Kurdish DEM party made comfortable progress. in several large cities in the Kurdish-majority southeast, including Diyarbakır, the unofficial capital of Turkey’s Kurds.

During the campaign, President Erdogan attended daily rallies, enjoying unlimited airtime on public television, where his opponents were almost completely ignored.

The defeat of his party (AKP, Justice and Development Party), especially in Istanbul, will have serious consequences.

Clinging to the city, the president canceled the 2019 municipal elections only to see Imamoglu’s landslide victory in a run-off three months later, his worst electoral defeat since he came to power in 2003 as first minister.

The mayor of Istanbul, signed on the platform of the Turks’ favorite politicians, has since continued to present himself as a direct rival of the head of state, who described him as a “part-time mayor” consumed by his national ambitions. .

For many observers, once elected, the mayor of Istanbul will have an open path to the 2028 presidential election.

The head of state, after resigning, spoke of “four years of work (…) that should not be wasted” until then, a way to rule out the possibility of early elections that would allow him to run again.

(Agerpress)