AKP loses two provinces in local election reruns

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost out in two provinces, but won in five of 13 district municipalities, in partial reruns of the June 1 local polls.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate Vefa Salman won in the northwestern province of Yalova with 29,227 votes, 228 ahead of the AKP’s candidate, Yakup Koçal.

AKP Deputy Chairman Abdulhamit Gül vowed to appeal the results yet again. “We have objections to around 800-900 votes,” Gül said.

However, CHP Deputy Group Chairman Muharrem İnce, who is also an MP for Yalova, said on June 1 that Salman had won and it was “a done deal.”

“We have won the election. We had already won the first time around,” İnce said.

As for the winning candidate, Salman said he was “tired of winning elections.”

Meanwhile, Sırrı Sakık, one of the key figures in the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), won the provincial election in the northeastern province of Ağrı with 23,460 votes, ahead of the AKP’s Hasan Aydın, who received 20,609 votes.

The elections in Ağrı were rerun after the AKP had repeatedly demanded that the March 30 votes be recounted. Sakık won the election in 14 recounts, before electoral authorities finally called for a rerun.

Sakık said he wanted to dedicate his victory to the miner who survived the coal mine accident in the western province of Soma and became famous when caught on camera asking to remove his boots so as not to dirty the ambulance stretcher. A few minutes after being rescued from the mine in which 301 workers lost their lives on May 13, the miner, Murat Yalçın, is heard in the video asking, “Should I take...