Ballot counts were still under way Monday morning in an anxious wait for Istanbul, Turkey's largest city and commercial hub. Both candidates —Ekrem Imamoglu for secular Republican People's Party, or CHP, and former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim for the ruling party— claimed they had won. Despite the setbacks, Erdogan's ruling party and an allied nationalist party still won more than half of the votes across Turkey. In predominantly Kurdish provinces, a pro-Kurdish party won seven top mayoral seats but lost some strongholds, including southeastern Sirnak province, to the ruling party. Amid a media blackout and despite significant losses in the region, it regained the municipal mayor in the Kurds' symbolic capital, Diyarbakir.

Source: The Telegraph April 01, 2019 07:52 UTC