Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has restated his commitment to rejig and re-energize his party and its grip over the political space, after suffering the biggest electoral blow in a nationwide local vote.
Opposition Ekrem Imamoglu led by 10 percentage points in the mayoral race in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, while his Republican People’s Party (CHP) retained Ankara and gained 15 other mayoral seats in cities nationwide.
It marked the worst defeat for Erdogan and his AK Party (AKP) in their more than two decades in power, and could signal a change in the country’s divided political landscape.
Imamoglu, told thousands of jubilant supporters late on Sunday, that 16 million Istanbul citizens sent a message to both their rivals and the president, while some of them chanting for Erdogan to resign.
Erdogan, who in the 1990s was also mayor of his hometown Istanbul, had campaigned hard ahead of the municipal elections, which analysts described as a gauge of both his support and the opposition’s durability.
