Turkey's opposition takes office in Istanbul, appeal still pending
Turkey’s main opposition candidate was declared Istanbul’s
mayor on Wednesday after election recounts were finally completed, despite an
appeal still pending by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP to re-run the vote
in the country’s largest city, Reuters reported.
The final result of the March 31 local elections showed a
narrow victory for the secularist opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in
Turkey’s commercial hub, ending 25 years of control by the AK Party (AKP) and
its Islamist predecessors.
The loss is especially hard for Erdogan, who launched his
political career in Istanbul as mayor in the 1990s and has triumphed in more
than a dozen elections since his Islamist-rooted AKP came to power in 2002.
The Turkish lira, which has dipped since the election,
firmed on Wednesday.
As he formally took office after a campaign which featured
months of harsh rhetoric from Erdogan’s AKP and more than two weeks of
challenges and recounts, Ekrem Imamoglu promised to work for all 16 million
residents of the city.
“We never gave up, we never gave up on our battle for
democracy and rights,” he told supporters at Istanbul’s municipality building.
“We are aware of our responsibilities and the needs of this city. We will start
to serve immediately.”
Imamoglu’s margin of victory – the final count put him some
13,000 votes, or less than 0.2 percentage points, ahead of the AK Party
candidate and former prime minister Binali Yildirim – prompted several AKP
challenges.
On Tuesday, after 16 days of appeals and recounts, the AKP
asked the High Election Board (YSK) to annul and re-run the election in
Istanbul over what it said were irregularities. Its nationalist MHP allies made
a similar request on Wednesday.
“We are aware there are ongoing processes... We hope the
relevant authorities will complete these processes in the most sensitive and
just way,” Imamoglu said.
“TOO MANY IRREGULARITIES”
The repeated challenges by the AKP and MHP have fueled
frustration among opposition supporters which spilled over into football
stadiums at the weekend when fans chanted at top Istanbul derby matches for the
mayoral mandate to be given to their candidate.
“There are way too many irregularities,” AKP Deputy Chairman
Ali Ihsan Yavuz said, presenting the party’s justification for its demand for a
new vote. “We are saying that organized fraud, unlawfulness and crimes were
committed.”
CHP Deputy Chairman Muharrem Erkek responded that there were
“no concrete documents, information or evidence in the AKP appeal for an
annulment.”
“There is no legitimate reason at all. You are using your
right (to appeal) to damage the will of Istanbul,” he said.
While the AKP was defeated in the battle for Istanbul mayor,
results showed the party had won most seats in its municipal councils. The
AKP’s re-run appeal applies only to the mayoral elections, not those for
municipal councils.
Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of Teneo political risk
advisers, said it was puzzling to call only for a re-run of the mayoral
elections, and added that some of the areas where the AKP claimed fraud took
place were under its responsibility.
Uncertainty over the election results has also put pressure
on financial markets, pushing the lira down nearly 5 percent.
“From the market perspective, an extended period of
uncertainty around elections is a bad idea — it would suggest more
election-related policy easing which is bad for the rebalancing story,” Tim
Ash, senior emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, told
Reuters.
Erdogan had vowed that Turkey would enter a four and half
year period with no elections after March 31, during which the ailing economy
would be the focus. If the AKP appeal is upheld, Istanbul, which makes up more
than a third of Turkey’s economy, will head to polls again on June 2.