Turkey votes this Sunday in municipal elections perceived as a test for the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who wants to take the mayoralty of Istanbul from the opposition.
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At the polling stations, which opened first in the east and an hour later in the rest of the country, voters did not show much enthusiasm.
At 70 years old, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched the campaign with vigor in this country of 85 million inhabitants alongside the candidates of his party, the Islamo-conservative AKP.
The president held four rallies a day and shared iftar every night, the dinner to break the Ramadan fast.
The battle for Istanbul
Erdogan has been personally involved in the election for the city council of the capital, Istanbul, along with his candidate Murat Kurum, an uncharismatic former minister whose portrait generally appears flanked by his on electoral banners.
The president seeks to make amends for the 2019 affront by evicting the outgoing mayor Ekrem Immoglu, an opposition figure who took away the country's main and richest city and who, if re-elected, would gain a lot of weight ahead of the 2028 presidential elections.
On Saturday, the eve of the elections, Erdogan held three rallies in Istanbul, the ancient Constantinople, the “jewel” and “national treasure”, where he was mayor in the 1990s before becoming president.
He again insisted on the deficiencies, according to him, of Imamoglu, whom he portrays as ambitious and little concerned about his city, calling him a “part-time mayor” obsessed with the presidency.
“Istanbul has been abandoned to its fate for the last five years. We want to save it from disaster,” he said before going to pray at the Hagia Sophia mosque.
In the Kurdish-majority province of Diyarbakir, in the southeast, clashes broke out on Sunday morning on the margins of the elections, leaving one dead and 12 injured, according to local sources.
