Turkey’s High Election Board (YSK) started evaluating on Monday an appeal by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party to annul and re-run elections in Istanbul, media reports say.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) won in the capital Ankara and Istanbul for the first time in 25 years in the March 31 local elections, in a major setback for Erdogan, who served as Istanbul’s mayor in the 1990s.
Erdogan’s ruling AKP and its nationalist MHP allies have called for the vote in Istanbul to be re-run, citing what they say are irregularities that affected the outcome.
The appeals have been pending for weeks, but the YSK ordered partial and full recounts across Istanbul. Istanbul’s new CHP mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, took office last month as the recounts were completed.