Turkey
A ballot box being opened in Istanbul following the local elections on March 31, 2024. Photo: AA
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Preliminary results for Turkey's local elections are reporting victory for opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), marking the first time a party has bested the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in over two decades.
Turkey held local elections on Sunday, with over 61,000,000 million people eligible to cast a ballot. The overall voter turnout reached 78 percent, slightly lower than 83 percent turnout for the presidential elections of 2023. The polls will determine local administrators across the country’s 81 provinces for the next five years.
Data from Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency puts CHP as the number party of Sunday’s polls, garnering around 37.74 percent of the votes, with over 99 percent of the ballot boxes opened. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP comes second with 35.49 percent, and New Welfare Party, a new Islamist conservative party, is a surprise third with 6.19 percent.
In addition to losing the majority vote, the AKP also lost main cities Ankara and Istanbul to CHP, and lost the Kurdish province of Sanliurfa (Riha) to New Welfare.
"May this win be blessed for everyone in this city... for every faith, for its Alevis, its Jafaris, its Shafis, for all its sects, for the Kurds of this city, for the Circassians of this city," said CHP’s Ekrem Imamoglu after he was reelected mayor of Istanbul.
"Today the people said we support peace, we support justice, we support democracy," he added.
Sunday’s vote also marks the first time the CHP has come first in an election since 1977.
Turkish President Erdogan said that the results did not meet their expectations, promising to closely examine potential mistakes of the party and rectify them.
"Unfortunately, we did not get the result we wanted and hoped for from the local election exam," Erdogan told supporters in his first post-election speech midnight.
"We will definitely take the necessary steps by weighing the messages given by the nation at the ballot boxes in the most accurate and objective way," he added, concluding that “wherever we lose or fall behind, we will identify the reasons very well and make the necessary interventions.”
The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) comes fourth with 5.68 percent.
The party has regained control of Diyarbakir (Amed), Mardin, Batman (Elih), Siirt, Hakkari (Colemerg), Van, and Igdir provinces, according to data provided by Anadolu Agency. The provinces were won by its sister party, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), in 2019 local elections but were later confiscated by state-appointed trustees (administrators) due to alleged links with Kurdish rebels.
The pro-Kurdish party has won Agri and Mus from the ruling AKP, and also emerged victorious in Tunceli (Dersim).
Nevertheless, it lost Kars to the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
“Those who do not consider the Kurds to exist, those who respond to the Kurdish policy with the policy of war and discrimination, received a good response in these elections. Congratulations on this success," said Tulay Hatimogullari, co-chair of the party.
There is a long history of animosity and conflict over Kurdish issues and rights in Turkey. The state has at times gone as far as denying the very existence of Kurds. Turkey's Kurds were provided limited cultural rights when Erdogan's AKP came to power three decades ago.
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