TURKEY: People start to cast their votes for the local majors in the municipal elections

Record ID: 217477

  • Title: TURKEY: People start to cast their votes for the local majors in the municipal elections
  • Date: 30th March 2009
  • Summary: ANKARA, TURKEY (MARCH 29, 2009) (REUTERS) (*** FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ***) TURKISH PRESIDENT ABDULLAH GUL ARRIVING TO CAST HIS VOTE JOURNALISTS INSIDE ROOM GUL CASTING HIS VOTE PRESS MEMBERS SOUNDBITE (Turkish) TURKISH PRESIDENT ABDULLAH GUL SAYING: "We are living the most beautiful sides of democracy today. Everybody says what they want to, and at the end it is up to the publi
  • Embargoed: 14th April 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Turkey
  • Country: Turkey
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA5CVLFTBQAIUSLUVV7WP5L7M03
  • Story Text: Turks began voting on Sunday (March 29) in municipal elections likely to give Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AK Party a fresh mandate to press on with political and economic reforms in the European Union candidate.
    Voters in the predominantly Muslim country of 72 million people elect mayors and municipal and provincial assemblies, but the vote is seen more as a referendum on the popular Erdogan, whose Islamist-rooted AK Party has won three straight elections since it first crushed the secularist opposition in 2002.
    Most opinion polls show the AK Party winning with ease with about 40 percent of the vote despite record unemployment and a worsening economy hit by the global economic crisis after years of unprecedented domestic growth and record foreign investment.
    Erdogan has pledged to reform the 1982 military-drafted constitution and change the workings of the Constitutional Court, steps which would remove some obstacles towards EU membership but threaten to revive tensions with an entrenched secularist camp that accuses him of pursuing an Islamist agenda.
    Erdogan, Turkey's most famous politician, denies this.
    The AK Party, rooted in political Islam but also embracing nationalists and centre-right elements, was nearly closed down by the Constitution Court for Islamist activities in a 2008 case that rattled financial markets and deeply polarised Turkey.
    The IMF and Turkey have been in talks for months on a deal markets say is key to shielding the $750 billion economy from the global crisis. Markets expect Erdogan to complete those talks after Sunday's vote.
    A former Istanbul mayor, Erdogan is hoping to wrest the mainly Kurdish southeast from pro-Kurdish parties in what might prove a historic step towards solving a conflict weighing heavily on the country's economic and political development.
    In an interview on Friday, Erdogan said he would consider it a "failure" if his party won less in the provincial assemblies vote than the 47 percent it won in a 2007 general vote.
    Critics accuse Erdogan of having lost his reformist spirit since Turkey won historic EU accession talks in 2005 and say he is growing autocratic.
    Turkey's conservative establishment, including the military and the judiciary, is deeply suspicious of Erdogan, and a sharp fall in support for the AK Party would reinvigorate the opposition, which is weak and seen as no alternative.
    Three people died and more than 40 people wounded in Turkey in violence between local headman candidates as Turks voted in municipal elections on Sunday, state run Anatolian news agency reported.
    In Sanliurfa, one man died and 16 people wounded in the fight.
    Four people including a child were also wounded in the fighting in Lice district of Diyarbakir, the biggest city in majority Kurdish southeastern Turkey, in fighting between the families of local headman candidates.
    In separate violence between two groups in Igdir province over local headman elections, three people were wounded, security sources said.
    Turkish voters elect mayors and municipal and provincial assemblies in Sunday's elections, but also local headmen who are unrelated to political parties.
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