President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party will ask Turkey’s top electoral board for a recount of all votes cast in local elections in Istanbul, a senior party official said on Sunday.
Initial results from the March 31 election gave a narrow victory to the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) mayoral candidate in Istanbul. The AKP had already appealed the results, leading to partial recounts in some districts and full recounts in others.
“We chose the path to eliminate numerical mistakes. But it’s not over,” AK Party deputy chairman Ail Ihsan Yavuz told reporters in televised comments.
The party has appealed for a full recount in the Istanbul district of Beyoglu, one of 39 voting districts across Turkey’s largest city, he said, and will ask the High Electoral Board (YSK) to do the same in the others.
“We will apply to the YSK for the recount of all votes in 38 (other) districts,” Yavuz said.
Erdogan’s AKP, hurt by a slowing economy, is reeling from its apparent loss of Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial hub, and the capital Ankara, in the local elections.
The AKP has been in power nationally since 2002, but it and its Islamist predecessors have dominated Turkey’s two biggest cities for a quarter of a century