Turkey’s top election authority voided the mayoral election won by an opposition candidate in Istanbul and ordered a do-over, ruling May 6 in favor of a request by the president’s party to throw out the vote it narrowly lost.
Opposition leaders said the Supreme Electoral Board’s decision to invalidate the results from Istanbul’s election raises concerns about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s grip on power and Turkish democracy in general.
Ekrem Imamoglu of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, placed first by a slim margin in the March 31 mayoral election, defeating the ruling party candidate, former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
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Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, alleged that a series of election irregularities made the results illegitimate.
Repeated ballot recounts and earlier appeals failed to keep Imamoglu from being declared the winner. He took office on April 17,
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said the Supreme Electoral Board revoked Imamoglu’s mandate and called a new election for June 23. As grounds to annul the March 31 results, the board said that some ballot station heads were not civil servants as required by law, the news agency said.