ANKARA — Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on Tuesday announced his reelection bid in Turkey's local elections in March 2024 in a highly loaded speech targeting his party’s leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, amid a tumultuous post-election period that saw sharp divisions within the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Speaking at a press conference in Istanbul, Imamoglu stopped short of officially announcing his candidacy apparently pending a formal endorsement from his party, but he declared his intention. “I’m hitting the road to defend Istanbul once again. I'm hitting the road to service 16 million equally, as I've done for the past four years,” he said.
The announcement comes amid a heated debate about whether Imamoglu intended to race for the main opposition leadership to unseat its current leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who has been facing increasing pressure to resign after he lost to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the May presidential elections.
Imamoglu’s remarks on Tuesday clarified that the Istanbul mayor has no intention of running for the main opposition leadership currently, but implicitly linked the main opposition’s potential success in the local polls to Kilicdaroglu’s resignation.
