ISTANBUL: Turks were voting on Sunday in municipal elections, with all eyes on Istanbul, the national “jewel” that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to pry away from the opposition.
But there appeared no excess of enthusiasm at polling stations, AFP correspondents reported, to a backdrop of raging inflation and massive devaluation.
“Everyone is worried about the day to day,” said Guler Kaya, admitting she had had to stop going out.
“The crisis is swallowing up the middle class, we have had to change all our habits,” said the 43-year-old.
“If Erdogan wins, it will get even worse,” she added.
In the capital Ankara, Meliha Sonmez sounded a warning as she prepared to vote: “This election is not just municipal.”
“If Erdogan loses the ballot, he will be weakened,” said the retired woman in her 60s who lost 32 relatives in the devastating February 2023 earthquake in Hatay.
Erdogan may not be a candidate in the municipal vote, but his name has dominated from campaigning to voting day.
His road to power in Turkiye began in Istanbul when he was elected mayor of the mythic city straddling Europe and Asia in 1994.
His allies held the city until Ekrem Imamoglu of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) wrested control five years ago, generating international headlines.
As soon as Erdogan clinched re-election as president last May — he has held the position since 2014 — he launched the battle to reclaim the city of 16 million people.
“Istanbul is the jewel, the treasure and the apple of our country’s eye,” the 70-year-old leader said at a recent rally in the city.
“Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkiye,” Erman Bakirci, a pollster from Konda Research and Consultancy, recalled Erdogan once saying.
Armed clashes were reported from a village in Turkiye’s Kurdish-majority southeast with voting underway, leaving one dead and 12 wounded, a local official told AFP.
The Turkish president has named former environment minister Murat Kurum as his candidate.
Polls gave Imamoglu a slight lead, but analysts caution that opinion polls in Turkiye have been wrong before and that the outcome is far from certain.
The 2019 vote was controversially annulled, but Imamoglu won the re-run vote by an even greater margin, which turned him into an instant hero for Turkiye’s notoriously fractured opposition and a formidable foe for Erdogan.
If Imamoglu manages to retain the Istanbul mayor’s seat, he’ll likely be the main challenger to the ruling party in the next presidential elections, set for 2028.
The election is being held with inflation at a whopping 67 percent and with a massive devaluation of the lira, which slid from 19 to a dollar to 31 to a dollar in one year. Analysts say this could work in favor of the opposition.
Erdogan threw all his energy into campaigning for his candidate.
On Saturday, he appeared at three campaign rallies in Istanbul, pressing his message that Imamoglu, whose name he never mentions, is a “part-time mayor” consumed by presidential ambitions.
“Istanbul has been left to its own devices these past five years. We hope to save it from disaster,” he said.
Imamoglu focused his campaign on local issues and defended his achievements in office.
“Every vote you give to the CHP will mean more metros, creches, green spaces, social benefits and investment,” he has promised.
Some 61 million voters are picking mayors across Turkiye’s 81 provinces, as well as provincial council members and other local officials.
The opposition has been fractured ahead of the polls, in contrast with the local elections five years ago.
This time around the main opposition party, the social democrat CHP, has failed to rally support behind a single candidate.
And the pro-Kurdish DEM party, the third largest in the 600-seat parliament, is fielding two candidates for Istanbul mayor, whereas in the 2019 race it agreed to stay out of the vote to implicitly support the opposition.
Polls opened at 0400 GMT in the east of the country and were due to close at 1400 GMT in the west, including Istanbul.
The first estimates are expected to be released late on Sunday.
Istanbul top prize as Turkiye votes in local polls
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Istanbul top prize as Turkiye votes in local polls
- The race is on for key cities as Turkey holds local elections in test of Erdogan's popularity
Lebanese PM to visit Syria, discuss disappearance of prisoners
- Nawaf Salam lays wreath at Martyrs’ Monument in Beirut to commemorate 50th anniversary of Lebanese Civil War
LONDON: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is scheduled to visit the Syrian Arab Republic on Monday to discuss common interests with the new leadership in Damascus.
It will be Salam’s first visit to Syria since he formed a government in February, and he is scheduled to discuss the issue of Lebanese citizens who disappeared in Syrian prisons during the Bashar Assad regime that collapsed in December. It has been reported that 622 Lebanese nationals remain forcibly disappeared in Syrian prisons.
“I hope to return with good news about those missing in Syria, and I will update the Lebanese people on this issue tomorrow,” Salam said, according to the National News Agency.
Salam laid a wreath at the Martyrs’ Monument in Beirut on Sunday to commemorate the anniversary of April 13, the date when Lebanon’s Civil War began in 1975.
Salam wrote on X: “We pause not to reopen wounds, but to recall lessons that must never be forgotten. All victories were false, and all parties (from the war) emerged as losers.”
He added: “There can be no true state unless legitimate armed forces have the exclusive right to bear arms.”
Aid worker missing after deadly attack on colleagues is held by Israel, ICRC says
- PRCS demanded the immediate release of Nsasrah, who it said was “forcibly abducted” while carrying out humanitarian duties
CAIRO: A Palestinian Red Crescent staff member who went missing in late March when 15 humanitarian workers were killed by Israeli fire is being detained by Israeli authorities, the rescue service and the Red Cross said on Sunday.
Hisham Mhana, the spokesperson for the ICRC in Gaza, confirmed to Reuters that it had received information that the Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedic Assad Al-Nsasrah was being held in an Israeli place of detention.
“As per standard practice, we informed the families immediately. In this case, we also informed the Palestine Red Crescent Society as they have special standing as a partner of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement,” he said.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment.
Mhana said the ICRC has not been granted access to Nsasrah, who until Sunday had been declared missing, and also has not been able to visit any of the Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli jails since October 7, 2023.
In a post on X, The PRCS demanded the immediate release of Nsasrah, who it said was “forcibly abducted” while carrying out humanitarian duties.
It added that Nsasrah and his colleagues came under heavy gunfire, which led to the killing of eight of them in a “grave violation” of international humanitarian law.
The bodies of 15 emergency and aid workers from the Red Crescent, the Civil Emergency Service and the UN were found buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza in March.
The UN and the Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of killing them after they were dispatched to respond to reports of injuries from Israeli airstrikes.
The Israeli military referred Reuters to its statement from Monday, in which it said that a thorough inquiry into the incident was still underway and that it would provide further details only once the investigation is complete.
It said that a preliminary inquiry indicated that “the troops opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area, and that six of the individuals killed in the incident were identified as Hamas terrorists.”
The Israeli military has provided no evidence of how it determined that the six were Hamas militants, and the Islamist faction has rejected the accusation.
The only known survivor of the incident, PRCS paramedic Munther Abed, said soldiers had opened fire on clearly marked emergency response vehicles.
Moroccans demonstrate in support of Palestinians
- Demonstrators marched through the streets of Rabat under pouring rain in response to a call from the National Action Group for Palestine
RABAT: Several thousand people demonstrated in Morocco’s capital on Sunday to show support for Palestinians in war-torn Gaza.
Under pouring rain, demonstrators marched through the streets of Rabat in response to a call from the National Action Group for Palestine, a coalition of several political organizations, including the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD).
“The Moroccans are with Gaza,” said the principal of a private school in Rabat who spoke to AFP.
The North African kingdom has officially called for “the immediate, complete and permanent halt to the Israeli war on Gaza,” but has not publicly discussed reversing the official establishment of ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the US-led Abraham Accords.
The latest protest followed another large rally held a week earlier, part of a spate of demonstrations across the country since the Israeli army resumed its offensive on March 18 against the Islamist group Hamas after a two-month truce in Gaza.
Israel denies entry to Jerusalem for Palestinian Christians marking Palm Sunday
- Israeli restrictions at checkpoints around Jerusalem require Palestinians to obtain security permits to access religious sites
- Only 6,000 permits were issued this year to the West Bank’s 50,000 Christians
LONDON: Israeli authorities prevented Palestinian Christian worshippers from entering Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank to participate in Palm Sunday.
Israeli authorities imposed strict restrictions on Jerusalem over the weekend, limiting the access of Palestinian Christians to the city, the Wafa news agency reported.
Only a limited number of worshippers, primarily residents of Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel, were able to attend religious services at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Wafa added.
Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week leading up to Easter. It commemorates the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem and is observed by Eastern and Western Christian churches.
On Sunday, Patriarch Theophilos III of the Greek Orthodox Church and Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa led liturgies attended by the clergy and a small group of worshipers.
Israeli restrictions at checkpoints around Jerusalem require Palestinians — Muslim and Christian — to obtain permits to access religious sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Father Ibrahim Faltas, Vicar of the Custody of the Holy Land, noted that only 6,000 permits were issued this year to the West Bank’s 50,000 Christians. Permit issuance requires a security clearance and often asks that applicants download a mobile application managed by Israeli authorities.
“This is the second consecutive year that only a small number of pilgrims are able to participate in Holy Week and Easter celebrations in Jerusalem due to the ongoing conflict (in Gaza),” Faltas told Wafa.
“Churches would continue to pray for peace, justice, and freedom for all people in the Holy Land,” he added.
The Catholic Palm Sunday procession took place on Sunday afternoon, starting from Jerusalem's Church of Bethphage and ending at the Church of Saint Anne.
Christians gathered for services at the Holy Family Catholic Church and Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israeli attacks since late 2023. In the West Bank, Palm Sunday services were held in churches throughout Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin.
Syrian President Sharaa heads to UAE on official visit - SANA
CAIRO: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will travel to the United Arab Emirates for his second visit to a Gulf state as president on Sunday, Syria's official news agency reported.
He will be accompanied by foreign minister Assad al-Shibani, who visited the UAE earlier this year.
They are expected to discuss issues of mutual interest, the SANA state news agency reported.
Sharaa visited Saudi Arabia in February on his first foreign trip since assuming the presidency in January.
His visit to the UAE comes as the new Syrian leadership attempts to strengthen ties with Arab and Western leaders following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December at the hands of Sharaa's Sunni Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
(With Reuters)
