Turkey’s High Election Board has scrapped Istanbul election results showing a defeat for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, responding to his AK Party’s calls for a re-run of the vote.
While the board, known as YSK, had not yet made a statement, the decision was announced by state-run Anadolu agency and a representative of the ruling AK Party (AKP), Recep Ozel, who said that a second vote would take place on June 23.
Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which in the initial vote on March 31 narrowly won the mayoralty in the country’s largest city, called the ruling a “plain dictatorship”.
Istanbul, with its 16mn residents, is the engine of Turkey’s economy and controls a major chunk of public spending.
The AKP had appealed for an election re-run after initial results and a series of recounts showed that it had lost control of Istanbul.
It was a shock loss for Erdogan who in the 1990s served as the city’s mayor and had campaigned hard ahead of the nationwide local vote, his first electoral test since last year’s sharp currency crisis tipped the Turkish economy into recession.
The Turkish lira weakened after Ozel, the AKP’s representative on the YSK, tweeted the decision, and it was at 6.1075 against the dollar at 1730 GMT and on track for its worst day in more than a month.
The lira has tumbled some 10% since a week before the initial election.
Suspense over the ruling had left investors worried that weeks of additional campaigning would divert funds and attention from addressing economic reforms.
It was unclear how the CHP and its supporters would respond to a re-run given suspicions over the YSK’s political independence from the AKP, which in recent years has centralised power in the presidency away from the central bank, courts and other institutions.
“It is illegal to win against the AK Party,” CHP deputy chairman Onursal Adiguzel said on Twitter. “This system that overrules the will of the people and disregards the law is neither democratic, nor legitimate. This is plain dictatorship.”
The AKP also lost the mayor’s office in the capital Ankara.
With its nationalist MHP allies, it wanted the Istanbul results annulled and cited irregularities that affected the outcome, which put it some 13,000 votes behind CHP.
On Saturday Erdogan said that “it’s clear” the vote was marred by controversy and urged the YSK to “clear its name” with a re-run.
Istanbul’s new CHP mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, officially took office last month after a smattering of partial and full recounts were completed across the city.
Since then, prosecutors launched probes into the alleged irregularities and called 100 polling station workers in for questioning as suspects.
The YSK decided to re-run the mayoral election in Istanbul because of unsigned result documents and some ballot box officials not being civil servants, the AKP’s Ozel said, adding that the board would continue to discuss whether to annul elections in two districts of Istanbul as well.
He added that parties may change their candidates for re-run in case of death or resignation.
Meanwhile, Imamoglu said that he would wait for an official declaration by the election body before issuing a response.
“There is no need to be in despair,” he said in a message on social media.
“I will wait for the decision of the Supreme Electoral Council,” Imamoglu said in a video posted on his Twitter account of him breaking his Ramadan fast with a family in Istanbul. “Then wait for me. This evening I will tell you my opinion ... everything will be beautiful.”
The CHP, which had previously called Erdogan a “bad loser”, said it was holding an emergency meeting after the election body’s announcement.
Supporters of Imamoglu urged restraint on social media.
CHP party workers urged supporters to avoid provocations, with its election volunteers saying: “We will act in accordance with the style of Ekrem Imamoglu ... let’s be together, let’s be calm.”
“We will win, we will win again,” a supporters group said in a statement.
Imamoglu, a soft-spoken former district mayor who struck a conciliatory tone throughout the heated race, has vowed to serve all citizens of the city, regardless of their political inclinations.