Erdogan in lose-lose situation after Istanbul vote: analysts

Voters in Istanbul will take part in a re-run of the mayoral election on Sunday after a vote in March was annulled over alleged irregularities.

Local elections around Turkey on March 31 showed the ruling party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remained the most popular overall, but it suffered a shock defeat in Istanbul, as well as losing the capital Ankara.

It was the first time in 25 years that neither Istanbul nor Ankara were under the control of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) or its predecessors.

However, the main opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu's success was short-lived in Istanbul after Turkey's top election body accepted claims of fraud by the AKP and called a re-run for June 23.

It did not annul the votes for the city council that were cast at the same time, and where the majority of seats went to Erdogan's party.

Binali Yildirim, an Erdogan loyalist and former premier, lost by around 13,000 votes to Imamoglu of the Republican People's Party (CHP) in March.

After two weeks of multiple recounts, the AKP applied in April to the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) to annul the vote, claiming there was widespread corruption and theft at the ballot box.

There were also claims some of the ballot box committee chairmen and members were not civil servants as required by Turkish law.

Critics of the ruling party claim the AKP pressured election authorities into calling the re-run in Istanbul because it is Turkey's economic powerhouse, home to 15 million people, and vital to the AKP's political machine.

"The municipality spends billions of US dollars on public tenders and services, which puts the AKP in direct contact with voters. In short, it's the gasoline on which the AKP machine runs," said Berk Esen, assistant professor of international relations at Ankara's Bilkent University.

But Abdullah Guler, an AKP lawmaker in Istanbul, dismissed the allegations.

"If the AKP looked at the situation like this, it would have done the same (in other big cities like Ankara and Antalya)," he told AFP. "Why didn't we? Because there was open corruption in Istanbul."
"Generally we would have a big rally in Istanbul before an election to send messages to the whole of Turkey. But there is only an election in Istanbul, not all of Turkey." But others, like Esen, believe Erdogan is avoiding a major presence "so that he would not be the face of defeat, which seems very likely according to the opinion polls."
But now, Esen added, "Erdogan is the last tool left at their disposal." - What risk does