Results are so far extremely close in Turkey’s local elections, which are widely seen as a referendum on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reports BBC.<\/p>\n
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The opposition CHP candidate for mayor has claimed a narrow victory in Ankara, where 91.4% votes have been counted.<\/p>\n
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In Istanbul, the governing AK Party said it had won a tight victory by less than one percentage point.<\/p>\n
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“If there are any shortcomings, it is our duty to correct them,” said President Erdogan, as results came in.<\/p>\n
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“Starting tomorrow morning, we will begin our work to identify our shortcomings and make up for them.”<\/p>\n
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However, he maintained that his AK Party (Justice and Development Party, AKP) had come “top by far”.<\/p>\n
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“Results show that, as the AKP, we emerged from this election as the top party by far, just as has been the case since the 3 November 2002 election,” the president said.<\/p>\n
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In Istanbul, the AK party has 48.71% of the vote compared to CHP’s 48.65%, but a few votes are still to be counted.<\/p>\n
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But opposition CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu said: “I know we won in Istanbul, it is very clear.”<\/p>\n
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More than 57 million people in the country were registered to vote for mayors and councillors in the election, which came amidst an economic downturn.<\/p>\n
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President Erdogan had previously said the poll was about the “survival” of the country and his party, which has dominated politics for 16 years.<\/p>\n
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This was the first municipal vote since Mr Erdogan assumed sweeping executive powers through last year’s presidential election.<\/p>\n
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But polls in the lead-up to the election had already showed a tight contest emerging in Ankara between the CHP mayoral candidate Mansur Yavas and AKP candidate Mehmet Ozhaseki.<\/p>\n
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In election-related violence, dozens of people were injured in clashes across Turkey. Two people were shot dead at a polling station in the eastern city of Malatya. Local reports say a fight broke out after a man refused to use a polling booth, preferring to vote in the open.<\/p>\n
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How was the campaign?<\/p>\n
The AKP have won every election since coming to power in 2002, but analysts say this is the first time the party is no longer confident of its success.<\/p>\n
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With most media either pro-government or controlled by Mr Erdogan’s supporters, critics believe opposition parties campaigned at a disadvantage.<\/p>\n
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The opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said the elections were unfair and refused to put forward candidates in several cities.<\/p>\n
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Some of its leaders have been jailed on terror charges, accusations they reject.<\/p>\n
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Mr Erdogan’s rallies have dominated TV coverage. At one on Saturday, the president sought to reassure voters and the party’s usually conservative supporters that everything was under control.<\/p>\n
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“I am the boss of the economy right now as president of this country,” he said, also blaming the West and particularly the US for its financial turbulence.<\/p>\n
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The president was criticised for repeatedly showing footage from the recent terror attack in New Zealand, in which a self-declared white supremacist live-streamed himself killing 50 people at two Christchurch mosques.<\/p>\n
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He warned citizens of those coming to Turkey with anti-Muslim sentiments, sparking a diplomatic row after invoking memories of Turkey’s dead in the battle of Gallipoli by Australian and New Zealand forces in 1915.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Results are so far extremely close in Turkey’s local elections, which are widely seen as a referendum on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reports BBC. The opposition CHP candidate for mayor has claimed a narrow victory in Ankara, where 91.4% votes have been counted. In Istanbul, the governing AK Party said it had won a tight victory by less than one percentage point. “If there are any shortcomings, it is our duty to correct them,” said President Erdogan, as results came in. “Starting tomorrow morning,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18161,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18159\/revisions\/18161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}