Recep Tayyip Erdogan hails historic win for opposition, calls it “a turning point”

Sunday’s vote was the worst defeat for the Turkish president and his Islamo-conservative party AKP, who have been in power for 22 years.

“We didn’t get the results we wanted.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accepted “a turn” For his camp on Sunday, March 31, following the opposition’s historic victory in the municipal elections. Counting nearly 99% of ballot boxes nationwide confirmed that his Islamo-conservative party, the AKP, in power since 2002, was facing its worst electoral defeat in two decades. The final results are expected to be declared on Monday.

The main opposition party, the CHP, claimed victory in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey’s two largest cities. For many observers, the mayor of IstanbulEkrem Imamoglu, Very popular, now a boulevard towards the 2028 presidential election. The CHP, a social democratic party, has won numerous other town halls, such as in Bursa, an important industrial city in the northwest of the country, which was taken over by the AKP since 2004. Apart from Izmir, the country’s third city and the CHP’s stronghold in the west, and Antalya, in the south, the first protest movement has achieved spectacular success in Anatolia. He is leading the race in provincial capitals long held by the AKP, surprising observers.

Erdogan vows to “respect the nation’s decision”.

“Voters chose to change the face of Turkey”Welcomed the head of the CHP, Ozgür Ozel. “Those who have been ignored have sent a clear message to those who run this country”, added Ankara’s CHP Mayor Mansur Yavas. From his party headquarters in Ankara, in front of a disappointed and unusually quiet crowd, the Turkish president made the promise “Respect the nation’s decision”. Resigned, he mentioned “Four years of work (…) will not be wasted” By 2028, a way to rule out the possibility of an early election that would allow him to run for re-election.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 70, threw his weight behind the campaign, particularly in Istanbul. “gem” of the country, of which he was mayor in the 1990s and who switched to the opposition in 2019. He held a series of daily meetings, enjoying unlimited airtime on public television, while his opponents were almost there. Private. But the commitment of the head of state, who announced in early March that these elections were “His Last”It wasn’t enough.

AKP candidates, however, remained in the lead in several major cities in Anatolia (Konya, Kayseri, Erzurum) and the Black Sea (Rise, Trabzon), which are strongholds of the head of state. The pro-Kurdish DEM party has a comfortable lead in several large cities in the Kurdish-majority south-east, including Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkey’s Kurds.