2009 Turkish local elections

Turkey held local elections on 29 March 2009. The overall winner was the ruling party Justice and Development Party, although the party saw a decline in its vote relative to the 2007 general election. The leading opposition party, the social democratic Kemalist CHP, increased its vote share, as did a number of smaller parties including the SP, DTP and BBP, whose party leader Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu had died in a helicopter crash four days before the election. The third largest party, the Turkish nationalist MHP, enjoyed a more modest vote surge.[1] The election was not contested by Cem Uzan's GP.[2] The AKP failed to take certain provinces it had publicly targeted, such as Diyarbakır,[3] İzmir and Urfa,[4] and did not achieve its goal of exceeding 47% of the overall vote.[5] There was localized election-related fighting in southeastern Turkey, in which five people were reported to have been killed and about a hundred injured.[5]

2009 Turkish local elections

March 29, 2009 (2009-03-29)
All 16 metropolitan and 2,903 district municipal mayors of Turkey All 3,281 provincial and 32,393 municipal councillors of Turkey
Majority party Minority party Third party   Leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Deniz Baykal Devlet Bahçeli Party AK Party CHP MHP Leader since 14 August 2001 30 September 2000 6 July 1997 Last election 1,762 mayors, 18,913 councillors, 41.67% 469 mayors, 6,023 councillors, 18.23% 247 mayors, 3,579 councillors, 10.45% Mayors 1,452 506 484 Councillors 16,621 6,737 6,419 Popular vote^ 15,353,553 9,229,936 6,386,279 Percentage 38.39% 23.08% 15.97% Swing 3.28% 4.85% 5.52%
Results map showing the winners of the 81 provincial capitals of Turkey by party. ^ Four different elections in order to elect both types of councillor and mayor were held on the same day. The results shown here are the provincial councillor election results, which best reflect the overall voting intentions of the electorate. See the results section for the full results.

Provincial elections

Flags of political parties before the Turkish municipal elections in Şile. The most visible ones are Nationalist Movement Party and Justice and Development Party) flags.

CHP (Republican People's Party) election bus before the Turkish municipal elections in Kadıköy, Istanbul.

The provisional results for provincial councils (Turkish: il genel meclisi) are given below:

Party	Party leader	Vote total^[1]	Vote percentage
AKP	Erdoğan	15,257,867	38.99
CHP	Baykal	9,090,363	23.23
MHP	Bahçeli	6,311,181	16.13
DTP	Türk	2,116,684	5.41
SP	Kurtulmuş	2,028,134	5.18
DP	Soylu	1,450,782	3.71
DSP	Sezer	1,073,553	2.74
BBP	Yazıcıoğlu^[2]	869,772	2.22
ANAP	Uzun	294,568	0.75
BTP	H. Baş	143,009	0.37
Independents	—	142,241	0.36
İP	Perinçek	100,241	0.26
TKP	E. Baş	68,882	0.18
ÖDP	Kozanoğlu	57,193	0.15
EMEP	Tüzel	43,977	0.11
MP	Edibali	34,847	0.09
HAK-PAR	Bozyel	25,222	0.06
LDP	Toker	10,904	0.03
BDP	Ayzit	6,868	0.02
HYP	Öztürk	5,985	0.02
Total		39,163,652	100

¹ Figures are provisional and will be subject to official review and confirmation.

² Great Union Party (BBP) leader Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu died in a helicopter crash four days before the local elections.

District elections

Elections were also held for district mayors (ilçe başkanı) as well as neighbourhood presidents (muhtar).

Results by province

Metropolitan provinces are in bold. AKP denotes provinces won by the Justice & Development Party, CHP denotes provinces won by the Republican People's Party, MHP denotes provinces won by the Nationalist Movement Party, DTP denotes provinces won by the Democratic Society Party, BBP denotes provinces won by the Great Union Party, DSP denotes provinces won by the Democratic Left Party and DP denotes provinces won by the Democratic Party.

Province Party Adana MHP Adıyaman AKP Afyonkarahisar AKP Ağrı AKP Amasya AKP Ankara AKP Antalya CHP Artvin CHP Aydın CHP Balıkesir MHP Bilecik AKP Bingöl AKP Bitlis AKP Bolu AKP Burdur AKP Bursa AKP Çanakkale CHP

Province Party Çankırı AKP Çorum AKP Denizli AKP Diyarbakır DTP Edirne CHP Elazığ AKP Erzincan AKP Erzurum AKP Eskişehir DSP Gaziantep AKP Giresun CHP Gümüşhane MHP Hakkâri DTP Hatay AKP Isparta MHP Mersin CHP İstanbul AKP

Province Party İzmir CHP Kars AKP Kastamonu MHP Kayseri AKP Kırklareli CHP Kırşehir AKP Kocaeli AKP Konya AKP Kütahya AKP Malatya AKP Manisa MHP Kahramanmaraş AKP Mardin AKP Muğla CHP Muş AKP Nevşehir AKP Niğde AKP

Province Party Ordu DSP Rize AKP Sakarya AKP Samsun AKP Siirt DTP Sinop CHP Sivas BBP Tekirdağ CHP Tokat AKP Trabzon AKP Tunceli DTP Şanlıurfa IND. Uşak MHP Van DTP Yozgat AKP Zonguldak CHP Aksaray AKP

Province Party Bayburt AKP Karaman AKP Kırıkkale AKP Batman DTP Şırnak DTP Bartın MHP Ardahan AKP Iğdır DTP Yalova DP Karabük MHP Kilis AKP Osmaniye MHP Düzce AKP

References

1. Hürriyet Daily News. "Ruling party main loser in local ballot"
2. MSNBC. "Genç Parti yerel seçimlere katılmayacak"
3. Hürriyet Daily News. Pro-Kurdish DTP sweeps Diyarbakir
4. Hürriyet Daily News. "Turkey's AKP loses against independent Fakibaba"
5. Al Jazeera English. "AKP fails to sweep Turkey poll"