Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan announced on Sunday that former environment minister Murat Kurum will be the ruling AK Party’s candidate in Istanbul’s mayoral election in March. This move is an attempt to regain control of Turkey’s largest city from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) incumbent Ekrem Imamoglu, who won the mayoral election in 2019, breaking a 25-year rule by the AKP and its Islamist predecessors.
The election results last May showed Erdogan winning re-election as president while his AKP and nationalist allies took a majority in parliamentary elections. This highlights the challenge the opposition faces in the nationwide municipal elections on March 31.
During a ceremony to announce the candidacy of Kurum and other AKP candidates in the elections, Erdogan expressed confidence in bringing Istanbul out of the interregnum of the last five years by “working shoulder to shoulder.”
Kurum, aged 47, served as the environment and urbanisation minister from July 2018 until last June and was then elected as a member of parliament for Istanbul, a city with a population of 16 million. He was a prominent figure in the government’s response to the devastating earthquakes in southern Turkey last February, which claimed more than 50,000 lives.
Before his political career, Kurum studied engineering at university and worked in Turkey’s mass housing administration. Erdogan announced the AKP’s candidates for over two dozen of the country’s municipalities on Sunday and is expected to announce its candidates for others, including the capital Ankara, later this month.
(Reporting by Daren Butler; Editing by Susan Fenton)
