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Turkey’s ruling party is set to lose control of Istanbul after a re-run of the city’s mayoral election, latest results show.<\/p>\n
The candidate for the main opposition party, Ekrem Imamoglu, won 54% of the vote with nearly all ballots counted.<\/p>\n
He won a surprise victory in March which was annulled after the ruling AK party complained of irregularities.<\/p>\n
His opponent, ex-PM Binali Yildirim, has conceded. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated the winner.<\/p>\n
“I congratulate Ekrem Imamoglu who has won the election based on preliminary results,” he tweeted.<\/p>\n
However, the result is being seen as a major setback for Mr Erdogan, who has previously said that “whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey”.<\/p>\n
In his victory speech, Mr Imamoglu said the result marked a “new beginning” for both the city and the country.<\/p>\n
“We are opening up a new page in Istanbul,” he said. “On this new page, there will be justice, equality, love.”<\/p>\n
He added that he was willing to work with Mr Erdogan, saying: “Mr President, I am ready to work in harmony with you.”<\/p>\n
Mr Imamoglu’s lead of more than 775,000 votes marks a huge increase on his victory in March, when he won by just 13,000.<\/p>\n
Mr Imamoglu, 49, is from the secular Republican People’s Party and is mayor of Istanbul’s Beylikduzu district.<\/p>\n
But his name was barely known before he ran for mayor in the March election.<\/p>\n
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Mr Yildirim was a founding member of Mr Erdogan’s AKP and was prime minister from 2016 until 2018, when Turkey became a presidential democracy and the role ceased to exist.<\/p>\n
He was elected Speaker of the new parliament in February and before that served as minister of transportation and communication.<\/p>\n
Mr Imamoglu’s narrow victory of 13,000 votes in March was not enough for Mr Yildirim to accept defeat.<\/p>\n
The ruling party alleged that votes were stolen and many ballot box observers did not have official approval, leading the election board to demand a re-run of he vote.<\/p>\n
Critics argue that pressure from President Erdogan was behind the decision.<\/p>\n
Mr Erdogan, who is from Istanbul, was elected mayor in 1994.<\/p>\n
He founded the AKP in 2001 and served as prime minister between 2003 and 2014, before becoming president.<\/p>\n
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But cracks in the party are now beginning to show and analysts suggest these could be exacerbated by this loss.<\/p>\n
“Erdogan is extremely worried,” Murat Yetkin, a journalist and writer, said ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n
“He is playing every card he has. If he loses, by whatever margin, it’s the end of his steady political rise over the past quarter of a century,” he added.<\/p>\n
“In reality, he’ll still be president, his coalition will still control parliament – although many will perceive his defeat as the beginning of the end for him.”<\/p>\n
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Source:bbc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey’s ruling party is set to lose control of Istanbul after a re-run of the city’s mayoral election, latest results show. The candidate for the main opposition party, Ekrem Imamoglu, won 54% of the vote with nearly all ballots counted. He won a surprise victory in March which was annulled after the ruling AK party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[2735,9331,11337,11606,911,9127,12773,5539,6030,10419,3874,6220,5331,1198,2627,3805,11377,3174,6944,13301,9277,10041,10220,2570,10885,3954,10415,594,12347],"class_list":["post-1676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-bbc","tag-city","tag-demand","tag-democracy","tag-election","tag-february","tag-increase","tag-istanbul","tag-journalist","tag-justice","tag-lead","tag-love","tag-mayor","tag-parliament","tag-pm","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-prime-minister","tag-republican","tag-results","tag-speaker","tag-speech","tag-transportation","tag-turkey","tag-victory","tag-will","tag-work","tag-who","tag-writer"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}