Turkey's Erdogan says his party may have lost Istanbul mayorship

Authored by reuters.com and submitted by Clagcs116
image for Turkey's Erdogan says his party may have lost Istanbul mayorship

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine greet supporters in Ankara, Turkey April 1, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that his AK Party appeared to have lost Sunday’s mayoral elections in Istanbul, but added that they remained “the number one party” in Turkey.

“In Istanbul, the majority of the districts are either ours or head-to-head. What does this mean? Even if our people gave away the mayorship, they gave the districts to the AK Party,” he told supporters in Ankara.

Erdogan also said his party would appeal results wherever needed, and added that he would take the necessary measures at ministries and institutions to make the system of governance more dynamic. He said there would not be other elections for four and a half years.

nimruth on April 1st, 2019 at 09:33 UTC »

losing Ankara and Istanbul in a row. best part is he said 'whoever loses istanbul, loses turkey' and then this happened.

Afatih on April 1st, 2019 at 02:23 UTC »

This is not done yet. They have stopped updating the results for the last 6 hours, claiming that there is a problem with the system. They have also announced twice that they won the elections in Istanbul, also opposing party announced that they won, providing the actual number of votes. Something really fishy and horrible is going on and I am still watching the news. People are still waiting by the ballot boxes to prevent any funny business.

Edit: Just to be clear, as a Turkish citizen who has been through many elections, I believe it is extremely unlikely to cheat on the elections, there are many ways to prevent any kind of fraudulent activity. But I genuinely believe that they are trying to find a way out this mess they have created right now. And the longer they delay the inevitable, the worse it will be for the next general elections. Turkish people will remember this, AKP supporters included.

Bac0nnaise on April 1st, 2019 at 00:39 UTC »

Erdogan also said his party would appeal results wherever needed, and added that he would take the necessary measures at ministries and institutions to make the system of governance more dynamic.

That is, we will dispute results when we lose, and if that doesn't work, we will rewrite laws to weaken those people's power.