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Türkiye's Local Vote a Test for Erdogan and Rival Imamoglu

Official ballots are displayed on a table during the Turkish municipal elections, in Istanbul on March 31, 2024. (AFP)
Official ballots are displayed on a table during the Turkish municipal elections, in Istanbul on March 31, 2024. (AFP)
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Türkiye's Local Vote a Test for Erdogan and Rival Imamoglu

Official ballots are displayed on a table during the Turkish municipal elections, in Istanbul on March 31, 2024. (AFP)
Official ballots are displayed on a table during the Turkish municipal elections, in Istanbul on March 31, 2024. (AFP)

Türkiye holds municipal elections across 81 provinces on Sunday March 31, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party (AKP) aiming to reclaim cities it lost in 2019, including the country's largest city of Istanbul and the capital Ankara.

On Sunday, polling stations opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 4 p.m. in eastern provinces and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the rest of the country. Initial results are expected by 10 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Sunday.

Analysts see the vote as a nationwide gauge of Erdogan's support and the opposition's durability, especially that of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of Istanbul. A tight race is expected in the city that is home to more than 16 million people and drives more than a quarter of the nation's GDP.

WHAT'S AT STAKE?

In the last local vote in 2019, the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) shocked Erdogan when it prevailed in Istanbul and Ankara and ended more than two decades of rule by the AKP and its Islamist predecessors.

Erdogan, who has ruled Türkiye for more than two decades and campaigned hard for the AKP in recent weeks, launched his political career as mayor of Istanbul in 1994.

Almost 11 million people are eligible to vote in the city, the Supreme Election Council says. Turnout in both general and local elections is very high in Türkiye at close to 90%.

Incumbent CHP Mayor Imamoglu's main challenger is the AKP's Murat Kurum, a former government minister. Polls give Imamoglu a slight edge.

Last May, Erdogan was re-elected president and his alliance won a majority in parliament in tight general elections - a result that splintered and disheartened an alliance of the CHP and other opposition parties.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

The budget of Istanbul metropolitan municipality dwarfs all other 80 cities in the country at 516 billion lira ($16.05 billion) in 2024, including its subsidiaries. The budget of the second city, Ankara, is 92 billion.

Controlling big cities and their budgets can give parties say over financing, contracts and job creation, boosting their popularity on the national stage.

Istanbul holds special importance for Erdogan as he rose to the national political stage during his time as mayor between 1994 and 1998.

Imamoglu has emerged as the opposition's main alternative to Erdogan. If he wins a second mayoral term, he would very likely run in the next presidential vote, analysts say, while a loss could stunt his career and leave the opposition in further disarray.

For Erdogan, regaining Istanbul and Ankara would bolster his pursuit of a new constitution that could potentially extend his rule beyond 2028, which marks the end of his current term, analysts say.

Under the existing constitution, the presidency is limited to two terms. Erdogan secured a third term last year thanks to a legal loophole resulting from the transition to a presidential system in 2018, as his initial term was served under the previous system.

"The electoral test is also significant for Erdogan's pursuit of a new constitution (or constitutional amendments) to side-step presidential term limits and remove the remaining elements of judicial independence," said Wolfango Piccoli, co-President of Teneo.

Who are the candidates?

MURAT KURUM, AKP, ISTANBUL:

Kurum, 47, was environment and urbanization minister from July 2018 until last June, leaving the post after the general elections in 2023. He was then elected as a member of parliament for Istanbul.

Born in Ankara, Kurum served at the state mass housing agency TOKI from 2005 to 2009 and later as the general manager of Emlak Konut, a government-run real estate investment trust.

EKREM IMAMOGLU, CHP, ISTANBUL:

Imamoglu, 52, originally from the Black Sea city of Trabzon, was a district mayor in the city before becoming Istanbul mayor.

He won the 2019 election in Istanbul with the backing of an alliance of the CHP, the nationalist IYI Party, and the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (DEM), which is now called DEM. This year IYI and DEM are running their own candidates. Many of Türkiye's Kurds are set to put aside party loyalty and back Imamoglu on Sunday, according to pollsters.

CHP'S MANSUR YAVAS, AKP'S TURGUT ALTINOK:

Pollsters say Ankara's incumbent Mayor Mansur Yavas, a former district mayor in Ankara, is comfortably ahead of AKP challenger Turgut Altinok, another former district mayor.

OTHER PROVINCES:

Turks will also vote in the other 79 provinces of the country, casting four votes in total: one for the mayor of their province, one for their district mayor, one for the district council and another for the local administrator of their neighborhood.

Other competitive cities include CHP-run Antalya, Bursa, and Adana.

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Numbers That Matter from the First 100 Days of Trump’s Second Term

US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
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Numbers That Matter from the First 100 Days of Trump’s Second Term

US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)

President Donald Trump's first 100 days back in the White House have been a demolition job — and that's a point of pride for his administration.

For the Republican administration, the raw numbers on executive actions, deportations, reductions in the federal workforce, increased tariff rates and other issues point toward a renewed America. To Trump's critics, though, he's wielding his authority in ways that challenge the Constitution's separation of powers and pose the risk of triggering a recession.

From executive orders to deportations, some defining numbers from Trump’s first 100 days:

Roughly 140 executive orders In just 100 days, Trump has nearly matched the number of executive orders that his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, signed during the previous four years, 162. Trump, at roughly 140, is essentially moving at a pace not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, when the Great Depression necessitated urgent action.

But the number alone fails to capture the unprecedented scope of Trump's actions. Without seeking congressional approval, Trump has used his orders and directives to impose hundreds of billions of dollars annually in new import taxes and reshape the federal bureaucracy by enabling mass layoffs.

John Woolley, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-director of the American Presidency Project, sees "very aggressive assertions of presidential authority in all kinds of ways" that are far more audacious than anything done by former presidents. That includes Biden's student debt forgiveness program and Barack Obama's decision to allow residency for immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children.

"None of those had the kind of arbitrary, forceful quality of Trump’s actions," Woolley said.

145% tariff rate on China Trump's tariff agenda has unnerved the global economy. He's gone after the two biggest US trade partners, Mexico and Canada, with tariffs of as much as 25% for fentanyl trafficking. He's put import taxes on autos, steel and aluminum. On his April 2 "Liberation Day," he slapped tariffs on dozens of countries that were so high that the financial markets panicked, causing him to pull back and set a 10% baseline tax on imports instead to allow 90 days of negotiations on trade deals.

But that pales in comparison to the 145% tariff he placed on China, which prompted China to fight back with a 125% tax on US goods. There are exemptions to the US tariffs for electronics. But inflationary pressures and recession fears are both rising as a trade war between the world's two largest economies could spiral out of control in dangerous ways.

The US president has said that China has been talking with his administration, but he's kept his description of the conversations vague. The Chinese government says no trade negotiations of any kind are underway. Trump is banking on the tariffs raising enough revenue for him to cut taxes, even as he simultaneously talks up the prospect of an agreement.

So far, despite the economic risks, the Trump team shows little desire to budge, even as the president claims a deal with China will eventually happen.

"I believe that it’s up to China to de-escalate because they sell five times more to us than we sell to them," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday.

More than 10,000 square miles of Crimea Trump said during his presidential campaign that he could quickly defuse the Russian-started war in Ukraine. But European allies and others say the US president's statements about how to end the war reflect a troubling affinity for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Trump's peace proposal says that Ukraine must recognize Russian authority over the more than 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) of the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy rejected the idea out of hand: "There is nothing to talk about — it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people."

Russia annexed the area in 2014 when Obama was president, and Trump says he's simply being realistic about its future.

The four meetings that Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, has had with Putin have yet to produce a trustworthy framework for the deal that Trump wants to deliver.

After recent Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and towns, Trump posted on social media that perhaps Putin "doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along."

Over 2,000 more Palestinians in Gaza dead Trump was eager to take credit for an "epic ceasefire" agreement in the Israel-Hamas war in order to restart the release of hostages taken in Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. But the ceasefire ended in March, and more than 2,000 Palestinians have died since the temporary truce collapsed. Palestinian officials have put the total number of deaths above 52,200. Food, fuel and medicine have not entered the Gaza Strip for almost 60 days.

Trump said in February that he would remove the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and relocate them elsewhere, suggesting that the United States could take over the area, level the destroyed buildings and construct a luxurious "Riviera of the Middle East."

Roughly 280,000 federal job losses The Department of Government Efficiency, led by tech billionaire and adviser Elon Musk, is dramatically shrinking the government workforce. Across all agencies, there have been about 60,000 firings, including at the IRS, which might make it harder to collect taxes and reduce the budget deficit. Another 75,000 federal workers accepted administration buyout offers. And the Trump administration has floated at least another 145,000 job cuts.

Those estimated job losses don't include the possible layoffs and hiring freezes at nonprofits, government contractors and universities that had their federal funding frozen by the Trump administration.

The federal government had about 3 million federal employees, including at the US Postal Service, when Trump became president, according to the Labor Department.

139,000 deportations The Trump administration says it has deported 139,000 people who were in the United States without proper legal authority. Trump’s first months also have produced a sharp drop in crossings at the Southwest border, with Border Patrol tracking 7,181 encounters in March, down from 137,473 the same month last year.

Deportations have occasionally lagged behind Biden’s numbers, but Trump officials reject the comparison as not "apples to apples" because fewer people are crossing the border now.

The administration maintains that it's getting rid of violent and dangerous criminals. But many migrants who assert their innocence have been deported without due process.

In April, the Supreme Court directed the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return to the US of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador citizen who was deported to his home country. Abrego Garcia had been living in Maryland and had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs. So far, Abrego Garcia remains held in a Salvadoran prison.

Trump said last week that he won the presidential election on the promise of deportations and that the courts are interfering with his efforts.

"We’re getting them out, and a judge can say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’" Trump said. "The trial's going to take two years, and now we’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do."