page_title: Istanbul
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Istanbul / Politics
caption_attribution_description: Ekrem İmamoğlu press conference, April 3, 2019. Image donated to Wikimedia UK by Mark Lowen, former BBC correspondent in Turkey.
context_page_description: Istanbul, formerly known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives in suburbs on the Asian side of the Bosporus. With a total population of around fifteen million residents in its metropolitan area, Istanbul is one of the world's largest cities by population, ranking as the world's fifteenth-largest city and the largest city in Europe. The city is the administrative centre of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
  Founded under the name of Byzantion on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city grew in size and influence, becoming one of the most important cities in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as an imperial capital for almost sixteen centuries, during the Roman/Byzantine, Latin, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.
context_section_description: Politically, Istanbul is seen as the most important administrative region in Turkey. Many politicians, including the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are of the view that a political party's performance in Istanbul is more significant than its general performance overall. This is due to the city's role as Turkey's financial center, its large electorate and the fact that Erdoğan himself was elected Mayor of Istanbul in 1994. In the run-up to local elections in 2019, Erdoğan claimed 'if we fail in Istanbul, we will fail in Turkey'.
  Historically, Istanbul has voted for the winning party in general elections since 1995. Since 2002, the right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won pluralities in every general election, with 41.74% of the vote in the most recent parliamentary election on 24 June 2018. Erdoğan, the AKP's presidential candidate, received exactly 50.0% of the vote in the presidential election held on the same day. Starting with Erdoğan in 1994, Istanbul has had a conservative mayor for 25 years, until 2019. The second largest party in Istanbul is the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP), which is also the country's main opposition. The left-wing pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is the city's third largest political force due to a substantial number of Kurdish people migrating from south-eastern Turkey.
  More recently, Istanbul and many of Turkey's metropolitan cities are following a trend away from the government and their right-wing ideology. In 2013 and 2014, large-scale anti-AKP government protests began in İstanbul and spread throughout the nation. This trend first became evident electorally in the 2014 mayoral election where the center-left opposition candidate won an impressive 40% of the vote, despite not winning. The first government defeat in Istanbul occurred in the 2017 constitutional referendum, where Istanbul voted 'No' by 51.4% to 48.6%. The AKP government had supported a 'Yes' vote and won the vote nationally due to high support in rural parts of the country. The biggest defeat for the government came in the 2019 local elections, where their candidate for Mayor, former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, was defeated by a very narrow margin by the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. İmamoğlu won the vote with 48.77% of the vote, against Yıldırım's 48.61%. Similar trends and electoral successes for the opposition were also replicated in Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Mersin, Adana and other metropolitan areas of Turkey.
  Administratively, Istanbul is divided into 39 districts, more than any other province in Turkey. As a province, Istanbul sends 98 Members of Parliament to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which has a total of 600 seats. For the purpose of parliamentary elections, Istanbul is divided into three electoral districts; two on the European side and one on the Asian side, electing 28, 35 and 35 MPs respectively.
caption: Ekrem İmamoğlu of the CHP is the 32nd and current Mayor of Istanbul, elected in 2019.
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