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Turkish opposition says it's leading after half Istanbul ballots recounted

06 April 2019 18:34 (UTC +04:00)

Turkey’s main opposition party said on Saturday its candidate for mayor of Istanbul retained his narrow lead over President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party candidate after recounts in nearly half of the city’s ballot boxes,ONA reports citing Reuters.

The AKP, hurt by a slowing economy, is reeling from its apparent loss of Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial hub, and the capital Ankara, in Sunday’s local elections. It has appealed results across both cities.

In power nationally since 2002, the AKP and its Islamist predecessors have dominated Turkey’s two biggest cities for a quarter of a century.

The mayoral candidate of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Ekrem Imamoglu, had a lead of 17,919 votes after recounts of around 49 percent of ballot boxes, the party said. That margin remains very slim in an election where both candidates polled over 4 million votes.