All eyes on Istanbul as Turkey goes to local polls in test of Erdogan's popularity
Turkish voters went to the polls on Sunday in municipal elections, with all eyes on Istanbul, the national "jewel" that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to pry away from the opposition, AFP reports.
Erdogan's 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 Ekrem Imamoglu of the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) wrested control five years ago.
As soon as he clinched re-election as president last May -- he has been head of state since 2014 -- Erdogan launched the campaign to reclaim the city of 16 million people.
"Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey," Erman Bakirci, a pollster from Konda Research and Consultancy, recalled Erdogan once saying.
The Turkish president has named former environment minister Murat Kurum as his candidate.
The latest polls show that Imamoglu -- who edged out an Erdogan ally in the 2019 election that gained international headlines -- has a slight lead.
But analysts caution that opinion polls in Turkey have been wrong before and that the outcome is far from certain.
The 2019 vote was controversially annulled, but Imamoglu won the re-run vote by an even greater margin, which turned him into an instant hero for Turkey's notoriously fractured opposition and a formidable foe for Erdogan.
