President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party has announced it will appeal election results after losing the mayoral race in the capital Ankara to Turkey's secular opposition.
Speaking on Monday, AKP secretary general Fatih Sahin said he expects the gap between the candidates to 'narrow down' and believes 'it will eventually turn into a positive result for us.'
President Erdogan declared victory in the pivotal local elections on Sunday night but the opposition's success in Ankara and elsewhere dealt a significant blow to his party's dominance.
And in a sign of possible turmoil ahead, his party is set to appeal election results in every district of the capital and said they would challenge the alleged invalidation of tens of thousands of votes.
Erdogan, prepares to cast his ballot during the local elections in Istanbul on Sunday surrounded by members of his party
Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayoral candidate for Istanbul representing the Republican People's Party (CHP) looks set to win the city according to the latest vote counts
In Istanbul, votes are still being counted and the race for mayor is said to be 'too close to call'.
The state-run Anadolu news agency said the main opposition's candidate in Istanbul had a lead of 0.28 percentage points over his AKP rival with 99.8 percent of ballot boxes opened
The candidate of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in Turkey's largest city Istanbul is ahead in the vote count against the candidate of President Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party (AKP), the head of the country's High Election Board said on Monday.
Sadi Guven told reporters that the CHP's Ekrem Imamoglu had 4,159,650 votes and the AKP's Binali Yildirim had 4,131,761 votes. He did not specify which percentage of votes had been counted.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party appeared so sure of winning Istanbul in Sunday's election that posters of its candidate thanking the city were plastered on walls early Monday.
Sunday's local elections were widely seen as a test of support for Erdogan as the nation of 81 million people faces a daunting economic recession with double-digit inflation, rising food prices and high unemployment.
If confirmed, the swings in Ankara and Istanbul could be excruciating for the politician who campaigned hard to retain hold of them. The opposition also retained its hold over Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city.
Although Erdogan was not running for office Sunday, he became the face of the campaign, rallying tirelessly for months across Turkey, using hostile rhetoric against opposition parties and portraying the vote as a matter of national survival.
The decline in urban support for his conservative, religious-based party came despite the fact that Erdogan wields tight control over the media, which hardly covered the opposition candidates' campaigns.
Erdogan's AKP had been so assured of winning that posters were put up across Istanbul to thank voters before results were announced
Election officials start counting ballots at a polling station during the local elections in Ankara which were lost by Erdogan's party
Behlul Ozkan, an associate professor at Marmara University, said Erdogan's loss of ground in Ankara and Istanbul indicated that his socially conservative and construction-driven policies no longer resonated in Turkey's cities.
'Political Islam's quarter-century old hegemony in Turkey's two largest cities is over,' he said. 'The basic problem is that Erdogan is not able to get votes from middle-income earners, who believe that the economy, education and urban administration are not run well.'
The main opposition party winning the race for metropolitan mayor in Ankara marks a symbolic shift.
The capital city was held by Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, the AKP, and its Islamic-oriented predecessor for 25 years.
More than 57 million voters were eligible to take part in choosing the mayors of 30 major cities, 51 provincial capitals and 922 districts in Turkey.
In big cities, voters cast four ballots, for metropolitan mayor, district mayor, the municipal assembly and a neighborhood administrator.
An official inspects one of the ballot papers during counting for the local elections in Ankara on Sunday evening
Ballots are transported after being counted at a polling station during the local elections in Diyarbakir
According to unofficial results reported by the state-run Anadolu news agency, Mansur Yavas, the candidate of the secular Republican People's Party, or CHP, won the top post in Ankara. The AKP still holds a majority of Ankara's 25 districts.
The government had led a hostile campaign against Yavas and his party, accusing him of forgery and tax evasion.
But Erdogan still came out on top as the ruling party and an allied nationalist party won more than half of the votes across Turkey.
Speaking from the balcony of party headquarters in Ankara early Monday, where he has for years declared victory, Erdogan said he and his allies had come out first. Admitting setbacks, he said the party would work to understand and fix where they failed.
Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wave flags in Istanbul after he declared victory in the elections
Erdogan's AK Party lost crucial votes in Ankara and other cities as it saw its stronghold on many mayoral seats broken
Erdogan addressing a huge crowd from the balcony of AK Party's Headquarters in Ankara on Sunday
Ballot counts were still underway Monday morning in Turkey's largest city and commercial hub, Istanbul. Both candidates -Ekrem Imamoglu for the CHP and former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim for the AKP- claimed they had won.
The opposition accused Anadolu of bias, and the agency's unofficial results for Istanbul were stuck at 98 percent of votes counted for hours. The private Demiroren news agency showed Imamoglu leading Monday.
The mayor's seat in the city of 15 million is important. Erdogan's own ascent to power began there in 1994.
In predominantly Kurdish provinces, a pro-Kurdish party won seven top mayoral seats but lost some strongholds, including southeastern Sirnak province, to the ruling party.
Since 2016, the government has replaced 95 elected municipal, provincial or district mayors with government-appointed trustees in a crackdown on the Peoples' Democratic Party, or HDP, for alleged links to outlawed Kurdish militants.
People's Democratic Party supporters (HDP) celebrate after the announcement of preliminary results of the local elections, in Diyarbakir
The HDP had vowed to win them back. Amid a media blackout and despite significant losses in the region, it regained the municipal mayor in the Kurds' symbolic capital, Diyarbakir. Government officials have previously threatened they won't recognize results if HDP candidates with 'terror' links win.
The secular opposition also made significant gains in provinces along the Mediterranean, including taking Adana from the nationalists and the resort-town of Antalya from the ruling party.
It also retained its hold over Izmir, Turkey's third largest city, located on the Aegean Sea. If Imamoglu wins in Istanbul, the opposition will administer the three most populous cities.
Supporters of Justice and development party (AKP) wave, from a car, a flag picturing Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Erdogan acknowledged setbacks in a speech to his supporters, saying his party would work to understand what had gone wrong and fix the problem.
Unofficial results reported by the state-run Anadolu news agency after all votes were counted showed a razor-thin win for the opposition in the race for mayor of Istanbul, Turkey's largest city and commercial hub. The opposition vote was at 48.8% support to the ruling party's 48.5% support.
A strategic decision by the pro-Kurdish party to sit out critical races in major cities may have contributed to the secular party's increase in votes.
Turkey will also have its first communist mayor, in the eastern province of Tunceli.
Ekrem Imamoglu: The man behind Turkey's shock local elections result
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party appeared so sure of winning Istanbul in Sunday's election that posters of its candidate thanking the city were plastered on walls early Monday.
Instead, Ekrem Imamoglu, a soft-spoken opposition figure, appears to have pulled off a shock win over AKP powerhouse candidate, former premier Binali Yildirim, to end the ruling party's long reign over Turkey's largest city.
Erdogan's AKP suffered a major upset in the Sunday ballot after results showed they had lost not only the capital Ankara and also the country's economic hub Istanbul.
Imamoglu was leading by nearly 28,000 votes with most ballots counted, Supreme Election Board (YSK) chairman Sadi Guven said on Monday.
Ekrem Imamoglu speaks to press at the CHP's Election Coordination Centre in Istanbul
Imamoglu's rise gives hope to a younger generation of politicians from the Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkey's secular party, as it challenges more than a decade and half of AKP in power.
The quietly spoken, bespectacled CHP candidate took a low-key approach to campaigning, hoping that discretion would be an 'advantage' against a popular, well-known AKP figure.
Imamoglu, 49, was often seen around a table discussing local issues with voters and taking selfies with them on their mobile phones.
In contrast, it was Erdogan who dominated scores of large rallies for his loyalist Yildirim in Istanbul, whipping up supporters in televised speeches that filled the airwaves, even though he himself was not running.
'The media, especially the state television is far from being fair... but we have social media which is at least an untouched area for now,' Imamoglu told AFP during the campaign.
'Right now my biggest weapon in the field is the thousand-year-old method of communication by word of mouth.'
In one campaign visit, Imamoglu toured the touristic spice market in the heart of Istanbul but kept his stoic approach when one citizen - apparently an AKP voter - refused to shake his hand.
'Imamoglu is open minded and a man of compromise who is fond of having a common table to discuss problems,' his press aide Murat Ongun told AFP.
Football and business
Born in 1970 in the Black Sea coastal city of Trabzon in northeast Turkey, Imamoglu studied business administration in Istanbul University and later completed a masters degree in management, according to his party website.
He worked in the family construction business before entering into local politics a decade ago. He was elected district mayor of Istanbul's Beylikduzu area in 2014.
He shares one common trait with Erdogan, a love of football. The Turkish leader was a semi-professional player in his youth. Imamoglu was also an amateur footballer and is still involved with local Trabzonspor team.
Imamoglu was well known as a competent mayor of his middle-class Istanbul district and benefited from his non-ideological approach that didn't polarise voters, said Berk Esen, professor at Ankara's Bilkent University.
'If he succeeds in performing well as a mayor, CHP may expand its voter base in Turkey's most populous city and the country, with Imamoglu emerging as a national figure,' Esen said.
His campaign slogan touted his pragmatism: 'If there is Imamoglu, there is solution'.
Throughout election night until the early hours of Monday, Imamoglu kept up a marathon of pressers to inform on the results.
After both candidates early Monday declared victory, he made sure to steer away from provocation. Declaring victory later on Monday, he also took a conciliatory approach.
'We want to start working as soon as possible to serve our people,' he said. 'We want to cooperate with all institutions of Turkey to rapidly meet Istanbul's needs.'
His results may not yet fully official, but Imamoglu on Monday had already changed his title on his official Twitter account to 'Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality'.
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News Photo President Erdogan's party LOSES mayoral race in Turkish capital
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