page_title: İzmir
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: İzmir / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Tunç Soyer, Mayor of İzmir
context_page_description: İzmir, often spelled Izmir in English, is a metropolitan city in the western extremity of Anatolia. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara, and the second largest urban agglomeration on the Aegean Sea after Athens, Greece.
  In 2019, the city of İzmir had a population of 2,972,900, while İzmir Province had a total population of 4,367,251. İzmir's metropolitan area extends along the outlying waters of the Gulf of İzmir and inland to the north across the Gediz River Delta; to the east along an alluvial plain created by several small streams; and to slightly more rugged terrain in the south.
  In classical antiquity the city was known as Smyrna – a name which remained in use in English and various other languages until around 1930, when government efforts led the original Greek name to be gradually phased out internationally in favor of its Turkish counterpart İzmir. However, the historic name Smyrna is still used today in some languages, such as Greek, Armenian, Italian, and Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish. Smyrna has more than 3,000 years of recorded urban history, and up to 8,500 years of history as a human settlement since the Neolithic period.
context_section_description: The current Mayor of the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality is Tunç Soyer from the Republican People's Party (CHP), in office since 2019.  His predecessor, the previous mayor Aziz Kocaoğlu (CHP) was first elected in 2004, and he was re-elected in both 2009 and 2014.
  İzmir has traditionally been a stronghold for the CHP, the centre-left Kemalist political party which forms the main opposition in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Being the third largest city in Turkey, İzmir is viewed as the CHP's most prized electoral stronghold, since the party has a more limited support base in both İstanbul and Ankara. Since the right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP) gained power in 2002, the electorate of İzmir has been notable for voting strongly in favour of the CHP in every general and local election. In the 2007 and 2010 and 2017 referendums, the İzmir electorate strongly rejected the AKP government's constitutional reform proposals. Almost all of the city's districts have returned strong pluralities or majorities for the CHP in past elections, although the party lost ground in the 2014 local elections.
  Due to the economic and historical importance of the city, İzmir has long been a strategic electoral target for the AKP, since beating the CHP in their most significant stronghold would be politically substantial. The majority of the citizens in İzmir have continued to vote for the centre-left political parties (in particular the CHP), despite large-scale pledges by the AKP promising investment and new infrastructure. For general elections, İzmir returns 28 Members of Parliament to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The province is split into two electoral districts which roughly divide the city into a northern and southern district, each electing 14 MPs. Anti-government protests in 2013 and 2014 against the AKP were particularly strong in İzmir.
  
  During the 2014 presidential election, 58.64% of the city's electorate voted for the CHP candidate Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu. In contrast, the AKP candidate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received 33.38% of the vote. The pro-Kurdish candidate Selahattin Demirtaş received 7.98%.
caption: Tunç Soyer of the CHP is the current Mayor of İzmir, elected in 2019.
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