NEWS DESK | Turkey's President Erdogan's ruling party has lost control of several big cities in the country's local elections. His party has won every vote since the party since came to power in 2002. Our Mohammed Al-Kassim has the story.
Story:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party faced a major upset on Monday as opposition parties triumphed in the country's municipal elections, seizing control of key power centers Ankara and Istanbul.
Sunday's vote came amid an economic downturn in Turkey and has been widely seen as a referendum on Erdogan's leadership, whose party has now been in power for a decade and a half.
Losing the country's two major cities would be a stunning defeat for Erdogan, a former Istanbul mayor himself, whose ability to win repeatedly at the ballot box has been unparalleled in Turkish history.
In a major upset to the ruling party, Erdogan's AKP party lost control of the capital city Ankara, as results on Monday showed the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate Mansur Yavas emerging victorious.
In Istanbul, the opposition candidate for mayor- Ekrem Imamoglu- was also leading Monday by nearly 28,000 votes with most of the already counted, Supreme Election Board (YSK) chairman Sadi Guven said.
Imamoglu won 4,159,650 votes while the Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate and former premier Binali Yildirim garnered 4,131,761 votes in the city.
Both candidates had claimed victory in the early hours of Monday following a tightly contested race for the country's largest city and economic hub and with preliminary results showing them in a dead heat.
Procedures to challenge the vote continue, Guven said with 84 ballot boxes left to the counted.
Erdogan campaigned hard portraying the vote for mayors and district councils as a fight for the nation's survival, but the election became a test of AKP's support after an economic slowdown hit Turkey.
With 99 percent of the ballot boxes counted early on Monday, opposition candidate for Ankara mayor, Mansur Yavas was ahead with 50.89 percent of votes and the AKP on 47.06 percent, Anadolu state agency reported.
Erdogan, whose ability to win repeatedly at the polls is unparalleled in Turkish history, appeared more vulnerable with the economy in recession for the first time in a decade, unemployment higher and inflation in double digits.
In Ankara, the opposition candidate for mayor, Mansur Yavas, was ahead with 50.89 percent of votes ahead of the AKP's Mehmet Ozhaseki on 47.06 percent, Anadolu state agency reported, with 99 percent of ballot boxes counted.
'Ankara has won. The loser in Ankara is Ozhaseki, dirty politics has lost. Democracy has won,' Yavas told supporters who were waving red Turkish flags and setting off fireworks at a celebratory rally.
AKP officials had said they would object to what they claimed were tens of thousands of invalidated votes in both of the major cities.
Speaking to supporters in Ankara, Erdogan said the election was a victory for the AKP, which along with its coalition partner, the rightwing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), won more than 50 percent of votes nationwide.
But the Turkish leader appeared to accept some municipal posts were lost, without referring directly to the results in Ankara or Istanbul.
'If there are any shortcomings, it is our duty to correct them,' Erdogan said. 'Starting tomorrow morning, we will begin our work to identify our shortcomings and make up for them.'
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