The outcome of the June 23 mayoral race in Istanbul marks a turning point in Turkish politics. The opposition’s Ekrem Imamoglu — a little-known district mayor until several months ago — put an end to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s election invincibility, trashing his candidate — former Prime Minister and parliament Speaker Binali Yildirim — in a momentous election rerun.

Under pressure from the government, the Supreme Electoral Council overrode its own precedent judgments to scrap Imamoglu’s original win in the March 31 local polls in which the candidate of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) had a tiny margin of some 13,700 votes.

Ahead of the March 31 vote, Erdogan campaigned across Istanbul to rally support for Yildirim, often eclipsing his candidate. The local polls, he argued, were a “matter of survival” for Turkey. The loss of Istanbul, albeit by a small margin, was a big defeat for Erdogan. But had the story ended there, the consequences could have been less menacing for his government.

Erdogan kept a lower profile ahead of the June 23 rerun, letting Yildirim be on the forefront and even appear on a television debate with his opponent, something unprecedented under the 17-year rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The change in Erdogan’s attitude was widely seen as a sign he was anticipating a defeat and thus trying to contain the damage for himself. Remarkably, he dropped the narrative that the elections were a “matter of survival” in an apparent bid to reframe them as a local contest between two contenders alone.