All eyes on Istanbul after Turkey local polls

Turkey awaited results from municipal elections on Sunday, with all eyes on Istanbul, the national "jewel" that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has aimed to pry away from the opposition.

The first estimates were expected to be released late on Sunday after the last polling stations closed at 1400 GMT in the west of the country.

The election took place against the backdrop of raging inflation and massive devaluation, with the uncertainty weighing down on many voters.

"Everyone is worried about the day to day" 43-year-old Guler Kaya said at an Istanbul station.

"The crisis is swallowing up the middle class, we have had to change all our habits," she said. "If Erdogan wins, it will get even worse".

"When Turkish people vote, the situation in the kitchen or on their plate changes the voting trend," Ali Faik Demir, a political scientist at Galatasaray University, told AFP.

Vote change happens "when we cannot afford a living, when we cannot eat", he said.

Erdogan may not have been a candidate in the municipal vote, but he dominated the campaign.

His road to power in Turkey began in Istanbul when he was elected mayor of the mythic city straddling Europe and Asia in 1994.

His allies held the city until five years ago, when Ekrem Imamoglu of the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) wrested control of the nation's economic powerhouse.

If Imamoglu retains his seat, he will likely be the main opponent to Erdogan's ruling AKP party in the next presidential elections in 2028.

But if Erdogan wins back Istanbul and Ankara, he will have an incentive to "amend" the constitution to stand for re-election for a fourth term, warned Bayram Balci, political scientist at Sciences Po university in France.

As soon as Erdogan clinched re-election as president last May -- a post he has held since 2014 -- he launched the battle to reclaim the city of 16 million people.

"Istanbul is the jewel, the treasure and the apple of our country's eye," the 70-year-old leader said at a recent rally in the city.

  More than a mayor's race 

 Erdogan named former environment minister Murat Kurum as his mayoral candidate for Istanbul, painting Imamoglu as a "part-time mayor".

"This election will mark the beginning of a new era for our country," Erdogan said after casting his vote in Istanbul at midday on Sunday.

"Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey," Erman Bakirci, a pollster from Konda Research and Consultancy, recalled Erdogan once saying.

In the run-up to the election, Imamoglu has defended his record and has focused on local issues: "Every vote you give to the CHP will mean more metros, creches, green spaces, social benefits, and investment."

  'Emotional day' 

 After casting his vote with his family in Istanbul around midday Sunday, Imamoglu emerged to applause and chants of "Everything will be fine", his 2019 election slogan.

"Today is an emotional day for me," Imamoglu said in the garden of a school polling station.

The election is being held with inflation at a whopping 67 percent and with a massive devaluation of the lira, which slid from 19 to a dollar to 31 to a dollar in one year. Analysts say this could work in favour of the opposition.

Armed clashes were reported in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast, leaving one dead and 12 wounded, a local official told AFP.

The pro-Kurdish DEM party said it had identified irregularities "in almost all the Kurdish provinces", in particular through suspicious cases of proxy voting.

Observers from France were also refused access to a polling station in the region, according to the Lawyers' Association MLSA.

 Fractured opposition 

 Some 61 million voters were eligible to cast ballots to choose mayors across Turkey's 81 provinces, as well as provincial council members and other local officials.

The opposition has been fractured ahead of the polls, in contrast with the local elections five years ago.

This time around the main opposition party, the social democrat CHP, has failed to rally support behind a single candidate.

Its candidates are narrowly favored in Istanbul, the capital Ankara and the Aegean port city of Izmir, though analysts have warned that opinion polls have not always been accurate.

And support for Erdogan and the ruling party remains strong in much of the country.

In the capital Ankara, retiree and voter Meliha Sonmez warned: "If Erdogan loses the ballot, he will be weakened."