ANKARA, Turkey — The candidate who came in first in the initial results of the Istanbul municipal elections has appealed to electoral authorities to confirm him as the city’s mayor, warning that the extended recount, now in its third day, could lead to unrest.
Ekrem Imamoglu, the candidate of the opposition alliance, was ahead of the ruling party’s Binali Yildirim by 23,000 votes in Sunday’s election when the Supreme Electoral Council announced that all ballots had been counted on Tuesday morning. The result dealt a severe blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he is a former mayor of Istanbul and had campaigned heavily in what is the biggest city in Turkey.