CHP keeps Izmir province and Thrace region

ISTANBUL

AA Photo

The CHP kept its stronghold of the western province of İzmir, while also collecting a plurality of the votes in the Thrace and western Aegean regions.

In İzmir, the party was able to get more than 50 percent of the vote, initial results show, while the ruling AKP got more than 30 percent.

 İzmir is billed as a main opposition fortress and the AKP challenged it by putting forward the former Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım as its mayoral candidate. İzmir, Turkey’s third largest province, is one of the few metropolitan municipalities where the CHP holds the mayor’s post.

In the other western provinces of Aydın and Muğla, the party garnered most of the votes when compared with the AKP. In the Thrace region, initial results show that the CHP won most of the votes in Edirne, Kırklareli and Tekirdağ. Since coming to power in 2002, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tried in vain to extend his electoral success to the western coastline and Thracian provinces.

In the northwestern province of Çanakkale, the CHP also collected more votes than the other parties.