ISTANBUL // The Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared set for a resounding victory in local elections yesterday.
With 48 per cent of the votes counted, the prime minister’s ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP, had 46 per cent of the votes cast nationwide, up from 38.8 per cent in 2009. The elections are widely seen as a referendum on Mr Erdogan’s tumultuous rule of more than a decade, and he has campaigned as if his own career were on the line.
High-profile races for mayor of Istanbul and Ankara, with incumbents from the AKP, were watched closely for signs of whether his influence is waning.
More than 50 million people were eligible to vote. Turnout appeared to be strong, with voters forming long queues at polling stations.
Mr Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics over the past decade in a period of great prosperity.
The party came to power backed by a Muslim base looking for greater standing in a country that had favoured a secular elite. But the AKP, whose party symbol is a light bulb, has also cultivated an identity of pragmatism and competence.
That image has been rocked by a corruption scandal that began in December, with a series of leaked tapes bringing down four ministers with revelations of bribe-taking and cover-up. One tape was said to involve Mr Erdogan and family members, but he and his allies rejected the allegations as a plot orchestrated by followers of the US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who has split with him.
Mr Erdogan has been suggesting at rallies of hundreds of thousands of supporters that the election will let the people decide if the tapes are significant.
“What the people say goes,” Mr Erdogan said after voting. “The people’s decision is respected.”
Violence broke out in the south of the country, leaving eight people dead and 13 wounded.
At least six people died and four were injured in the village of Yuvacik, in Sanliurfa province in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
Rival families fought with clubs, knives and guns in a battle over their candidates in the southern region of Hatay, where two people died and nine were injured.
Femen activists yesterday staged a bare-breasted protest against Mr Erdogan, who has come under fire over an internet crackdown.
The two women, who had the words “Ban Erdogan” written across their chests, were quickly covered up and arrested after flashing their breasts in the Istanbul polling station where Mr Erdogan had been due to vote.
The prime minister had already opted for a different place to vote after Femen announced plans for the protest at the school on the Asian side of the city where Mr Erdogan has voted in the past.
The Ukrainian feminist group had staged earlier actions against Mr Erdogan’s decision to block Twitter after the social media service was used to spread damaging corruption claims against him and his allies.
In an earlier photo shared on Twitter, a Femen activist had written across her bare chest Google DNS codes that allow users to circumvent the block, along with the Twitter hashtag #DirenTwitter (Resist Twitter).
Last July, after a Turkish police crackdown on anti-government protesters that left eight dead and thousands injured, a Femen activist was arrested after flashing her breasts in an anti-Erdogan protest at an Istanbul airport.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
