Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) took control of another opposition-run İstanbul municipality on Wednesday after three council members elected on the Republican People’s Party (CHP) ticket backed the AKP candidate in a vote for acting mayor.
AKP candidate Kemal Türkyılmaz was elected acting mayor of the Adalar district, replacing Medine Pamuk, who resigned on September 14 citing health problems.
Nine council members were eligible to vote. Türkyılmaz received five votes to CHP candidate Aytül Ekşiyan’s four in the first round, meaning three members elected on the CHP ticket had backed the AKP candidate. In the second round the candidates received four votes each, with one ballot declared invalid.
Tensions rose after the second round, when police entered the meeting hall on security grounds and the room was cleared. CHP and main opposition New Party members subsequently walked out, leaving Türkyılmaz as the only candidate. He was elected in the fourth round with five votes.
The CHP later referred Yavuz Çiftçioğlu, İsmail Onur Balbınar and Ahmet Tanay Garip, the three council members who backed Türkyılmaz, to the party’s disciplinary board with a request for their expulsion.
The vote followed months of arrests, suspensions and political upheaval at the municipality, which the CHP won in the March 2024 local elections.
Adalar Mayor Ali Ercan Akpolat was arrested on June 23 as part of a corruption investigation and subsequently suspended from office by the Interior Ministry. Pamuk was elected acting mayor following his arrest but stepped down earlier this month.
The election was initially scheduled for September 21 but was postponed after CHP members stayed away as part of an agreement with the New Party, preventing the council from reaching the required quorum.
The New Party was established in July by former CHP leader Özgür Özel and his supporters after a court annulled the CHP’s 2023 leadership congress, removed Özel from the chairmanship and reinstated former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Özel and 90 other lawmakers resigned from the CHP to form the new party.
New Party İstanbul provincial chairman Özgür Çelik accused the government of pressuring council members ahead of Wednesday’s vote.
He alleged that a restriction preventing Çiftçioğlu from voting, which was lifted shortly before the election, had been removed in return for his support for the AKP candidate. The lifting of the restriction was reported before the vote.
Çelik also alleged that one council member had been threatened with the demolition of his business and another with arrest, saying the pressure had shifted the balance in the council in the AKP’s favor.
Adalar is the latest İstanbul district won by the CHP in the 2024 local elections to subsequently pass to AKP control following investigations and arrests targeting opposition-run municipalities.
The developments are part of a wave of investigations and arrests involving CHP municipalities that intensified following the March 2025 arrest of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main political rival.
Opposition parties say the investigations are politically motivated and aimed at reversing their gains in the 2024 local elections. The government denies political interference and says the judiciary operates independently.
In a related development on Wednesday, nine people, including former acting mayor Erkan Özkan, were detained in a second wave of a corruption investigation into the Menderes Municipality in the western province of İzmir, another municipality won by the CHP in 2024 that later passed to AKP control.
Prosecutors said the latest suspects are accused of assisting an alleged criminal organization and involvement in bribery and extortion by a public official.
Menderes Mayor İlkay Çiçek was among 16 suspects detained in the first operation on August 4. He and nine others were subsequently jailed pending trial and Çiçek was suspended from office by the Interior Ministry on August 8.
The AKP took control of the municipality later that month when its candidate Asuman Şen defeated New Party candidate Barış Gürsoy in a council vote for acting mayor.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
