ISTANBUL (AFP) – Turks will vote on Sunday in local polls as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, buoyed by a strong showing in last year’s general elections, sets his sights on winning back Istanbul.
The secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) seized back control of the city, Turkiye’s economic powerhouse in 2019 for the first time since before Erdogan ruled it as mayor in the 1990s.
Those watershed 2019 elections also saw the opposition win back the capital Ankara and keep power in the crucial Aegean port city of Izmir, shattering Erdogan’s image of political invincibility.
Erdogan has entrusted his former environment minister Murat Kurum to run for mayor of Istanbul in the March 31 election.
He is seeking to avenge the worst political defeat of his two-decade rule, when CHP arch rival Ekrem Imamoglu took the town hall. The president bounced back last year to win a tough presidential election that came in the throes of an economic crisis and a massive earthquake that claimed more than 53,000 lives in Turkiye.
