Polls closed at 5pm on Sunday in Turkey’s local elections, with the counting of votes now underway.
Voters across Turkey’s 81 provinces elected their local representatives to serve for the next five years, with both domestic and international focus primarily centred on the country’s largest city, Istanbul.
The transcontinental city is home to more than 16 million people and was the scene of a historic electoral upset last time out when Ekrem Imamoglu of opposition party the CHP beat governing Ak Parti candidate and former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long recognised the importance of Istanbul’s political leanings in Turkey’s electoral future, once saying that whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey.
He himself rose to prominence in the 1990s after becoming the city’s mayor and has been fighting tooth and nail in this year’s campaign to win the city back for his party and its candidate, former Environment Minister Murat Kurum.
After he voted, he said “this election will lead to the beginning of a new era.”
He referenced last May’s presidential election, in which he beat opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu despite spending much of the campaign behind in the polls and said “I hope this election will yield a good result for our country and our nation.”
Murat Kurum is also the preferred candidate of Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, who shared an iftar meal, the breaking of the Ramadan fast, with him ten days ago. Tatar said Kurum had “greatly helped in the opening of Varosha” back in 2020.
Imamoglu may have his work cut out to retain the mayoralty this evening, with the opposition unity which helped him on his way five years ago now nowhere to be seen.
The Kurdish left-wing Dem Party and Meral Aksener’s Iyi Party are both fielding candidates this year, and in total, 22 parties have put forward candidates for the city’s mayoralty.
When he cast his vote on Sunday afternoon, Imamoglu said, “today is an emotional day for me, because it is the moment of giving blessings for five years of effort.
“I would like to express that I do my best, together with all my colleagues, to work for this city at the highest level, in line with the principle of equality, without separating any district from another or engaging in partisanship.”
He added, “if I broke someone’s heart, I would of course ask for forgiveness in this city. I hope we are able to count our blessings from our 16 million people with the results of the ballot box. If we are given the authority, we will continue to provide the best life possible to our city for the next five years.”
Outside of Istanbul, Erdogan’s Ak Parti also has its sights set on Turkey’s other two largest cities, its capital Ankara and Izmir.
Despite this, neither look particularly likely to turn to his party, with incumbent CHP mayor Mansur Yavas tipped by experts to retain the mayoralty, and the Ak Parti requiring a 20-point swing in Izmir to win.
There were reports of violence in some areas of the country, with as many as three people reported kills after shootings related to mukhtar elections.