Turkey’s opposition has won a high-stakes rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election, a serious blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a landmark victory in a country where many feared democracy was failing. Today 16 million Istanbullus have refreshed our belief in democracy,” İmamoğlu told supporters in a televised speech. At polling stations on Sunday both CHP and AKP voters stressed that they wanted the repeat election accepted as final. However, in both a televised debate with İmamoğlu and in conversations with voters, Yıldırım struggled to explain why the repeat election was necessary. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ekrem İmamoğlu, the winning mayoral candidate of the main opposition Republican People’s party (CHP), casts his vote in Istanbul earlier on Sunday.

Source: The Guardian June 23, 2019 15:33 UTC