Vote recount after Erdogan’s party appeals

Istanbul: Turkish electoral authorities began recounting votes from Istanbul districts after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP challenged tallies showing an opposition candidate narrowly won a weekend local election.

The AKP won most votes nationwide in Sunday’s municipal ballot, but results also showed the party lost the capital Ankara and the country’s economic hub Istanbul in one of its worst setbacks in a decade and a half in power.

AKP officials on Tuesday filed a challenge with electoral authorities saying they had found irregularities in ballots in Ankara and Istanbul.

“The district branches of the electoral board in Istanbul decided to recount the ballots in eight districts after the appeals yesterday,” Supreme Election Board chief Sadi Guven told reporters yesterday.

He said some of the district branches had already started rechecking ballots, most of which were votes that had been rejected as invalid.

AKP officials had said there was a huge discrepancy between ballots cast at polling stations and data sent to election authorities.

Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, was a key election prize for Erdogan and he presented former premier and loyalist Binali Yildirim to run as the party candidate for mayor.

Erdogan, himself a former Istanbul mayor, had campaigned hard in the city, but the ruling party was stung by the economy with Turkey in recession for the first time in a decade and inflation in double digits.

Istanbul was a tight race and both Yildirim and the opposition CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu declared victory when tallies showed them in a dead heat.