Turkish voters headed to the polls on Sunday for municipal elections, with a focus on Istanbul, the national “jewel” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan aims to secure from the opposition
Some 61 million voters will choose mayors across Turkey’s 81 provinces, as well as provincial council members and other local officials.
Istanbul’s ballot paper on Sunday will have 49 candidates and will be 97 centimeters long.
The election is being held with inflation at a whopping 67 percent and with a massive devaluation of the lira, which slid from 19 to a dollar to 31 to a dollar in one year. Analysts say this could work in favor of the opposition.
Polls opened at 0400 GMT in the east of the country and were due to close at 1400 GMT in the west, including Istanbul.
The first estimates are expected to be released late on Sunday.
Erdogan’s road to power in Turkey began in Istanbul when he was elected mayor of the mythic city straddling Europe and Asia in 1994.
His allies held the city until Ekrem Imamoglu of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) wrested control five years ago.
As soon as he clinched re-election as president last May, he has been head of state since 2014, Erdogan launched the campaign to reclaim the city of 16 million people.
“Istanbul is the jewel, the treasure and the apple of our country’s eye,” the 70-year-old leader said at a rally in the city recently.
“Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey,” Erman Bakirci, a pollster from Konda Research and Consultancy, recalled Erdogan once saying.
The Turkish president has named former environment minister Murat Kurum as his candidate.
The latest polls show that Imamoglu, who edged out an Erdogan ally in the 2019 election that gained international headlines, has a slight lead.
The 2019 vote was controversially annulled, but Imamoglu won the re-run vote by an even greater margin, which turned him into an instant hero for Turkey’s notoriously fractured opposition and a formidable foe for Erdogan.
One killed, 12 injured during elections in southeast Turkey
One person was killed and 12 others were wounded in clashes between two groups in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast during Sunday’s local elections, a local official told AFP.
The incident that took place in Agaclidere village 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the city of Diyarbakir turned violent and included guns, the official said.
One bullet hit the car of a local journalist.
