<\/p>\n
Turkish voters went to the polls on Sunday in municipal elections, with all eyes on Istanbul, the national \u201cjewel\u201d that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to pry away from the opposition.<\/p>\n
Erdogan\u2019s road to power in Turkiye began in Istanbul when he was elected mayor of the mythic city straddling Europe and Asia in 1994.<\/p>\n
His allies held the city until Ekrem Imamoglu of the secular Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP) wrested control five years ago.<\/p>\n
As soon as he clinched<\/a> re-election as president last May \u2014 he has been head of state since 2014 \u2014 Erdogan launched the campaign to reclaim the city of 16 million people.<\/p>\n \u201cIstanbul is the jewel, the treasure and the apple of our country\u2019s eye,\u201d the 70-year-old leader said at a rally in the city recently.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkiye,\u201d Erman Bakirci, a pollster from Konda Research and Consultancy, recalled Erdogan once saying.<\/p>\n The Turkish president has named former environment minister Murat Kurum as his candidate.<\/p>\n The latest polls show that Imamoglu \u2014 who edged out an Erdogan ally<\/a> in the 2019 election that gained international headlines \u2014 has a slight lead.<\/p>\n But analysts caution that opinion polls in Turkiye have been wrong before and that the outcome is far from certain.<\/p>\n 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 Turkiye\u2019s notoriously fractured opposition and a formidable foe for Erdogan.<\/p>\n Observers say that if Imamoglu manages to retain the Istanbul mayor\u2019s seat, he\u2019ll be the main challenger to the ruling party in the next presidential elections, set for 2028.<\/p>\n Erdogan has thrown all his energy into campaigning for his candidate. On Saturday, Erdogan appeared at three campaign rallies in the city, pressing his message that Imamoglu, whose name he never mentions, is a \u201cpart-time mayor\u201d consumed by his presidential ambitions.<\/p>\n \u201cIstanbul has been left to its own devices these past five years. We hope to save it from disaster,\u201d he said before heading to prayer at the famed Hagia Sophia mosque.<\/p>\n Imamoglu has focused his campaign on local issues and defended his achievements in office.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery vote you give to the CHP will mean more metros, creches, green spaces, social benefits and investment,\u201d he has promised.<\/p>\n Some 61 million voters will choose mayors across Turkiye\u2019s 81 provinces, as well as provincial council members and other local officials.<\/p>\n The opposition has been fractured ahead of the polls, in contrast with the local polls five years ago.<\/p>\n This time around the main opposition party, the social democrat CHP, has failed to rally support behind a single candidate.<\/p>\n The pro-Kurdish DEM party, for example, the third largest in the 600-seat parliament, is fielding two candidates for Istanbul mayor, whereas in the 2019 race it agreed to stay out of the vote to implicitly support the opposition.<\/p>\n Istanbul\u2019s ballot paper on Sunday will have 49 candidates and will be 97 centimetres long.<\/p>\n The election is being held with inflation at a whopping 67 per cent 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 favour of the opposition.<\/p>\n Observers say that wins for his candidates in the main cities will embolden Erdogan.<\/p>\n \u201cIf he manages to regain Istanbul and Ankara, Erdogan will see it as encouragement to modify the constitution to stand in 2028,\u201d said Bayram Balci, a researcher at the Centre for International Study and Research at Sciences Po university in Paris.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if Imamoglu manages to keep his seat, he will have won the battle within the opposition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Polls opened at 0400 GMT in the east of the country and were due to close at 1400 GMT in the west, including Istanbul.<\/p>\n The first estimates are expected to be released late on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Turkish voters went to the polls on Sunday in municipal elections, with all eyes on Istanbul, the national \u201cjewel\u201d that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to pry away from the opposition. Erdogan\u2019s road to power in Turkiye began in Istanbul when he was elected mayor of the mythic city straddling Europe and Asia in 1994. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/03\/3112325823ac2f0.jpg?r=123312","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>More than a mayor\u2019s race<\/h2>\n
\nThe city has been plastered with posters showing Erdogan and Kurum together.<\/p>\n<\/a>Massive inflation<\/h2>\n