Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00 The main Republican People's Party, the biggest party of the opposition, got the three biggest
00:08 cities in the land, Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir.
00:13 The jewel in the crown of those three is definitely Istanbul, which is the biggest city in the
00:19 country with 16 million people.
00:22 It's the financial capital of the country, and by CHP taking it for a second municipal
00:30 elections in a row, this was a great personal defeat for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
00:38 who was born in Istanbul, began his career as a politician in Istanbul, and was mayor
00:45 of the city in the 1990s.
00:48 Across Turkey, according to unofficial results published by the opposition Sözcü Media
00:55 Group by the journalist Ismail Saymaz, the Republican People's Party got 36 provincial
01:03 councils.
01:04 Erdogan's AK Party got 23 provincial councils, and this made the Republican People's Party,
01:13 the opposition party, the first party in Turkey for the first time in 47 years.
01:21 Now, the question is, how does one reconcile these results with last year's results, when
01:28 Erdogan trounced the Republican People's Party for defeating its candidate for the presidency,
01:37 52 to 48 percent?
01:39 Well, all one can say is that Turks vote more boldly in local elections, and observers are
01:47 saying that yesterday Turkish voters voted according to the issues rather than identity
01:54 politics.
01:55 You know, they are thought to have voted for Erdogan last year because they identified
02:00 with him, and they didn't vote for the Republican People's Party candidate for the presidency,
02:07 Kemal Kileci DoÄźulu.
02:08 Now, the issues in these elections were first and foremost the economy, where inflation
02:14 is officially at 67 percent, but many economists don't believe the official figures, and an
02:22 economic think tank, ENAG, has come up with the results that inflation in Turkey is actually
02:28 more than 120 percent, and the fact that pensions have fallen so low.
02:35 The lowest pension in Turkey is below the minimum wage.
02:40 One political commentator, Murat Yedkin, said this is, you know, yesterday's election results
02:49 showed the end of identity politics in Turkey.