ISTANBUL: Turkey’s High Election Board decided that Abdullah Zeydan, DEM candidate in the eastern city of Van who won 55.5% of votes, will be handed the mayoral mandate of the city after Sunday’s vote, two election board sources said on Wednesday.
Pro-Kurdish DEM Party, parliament’s third largest party, which performed well in the mainly Kurdish southeast, welcomed the decision in a post on social media platform X.
On Tuesday, the city’s election board decided that the candidate of Erdogan’s Ak Party, the second-place finisher who took 27.2% of the votes in the city, should be handed the mandate due to a legal issue with Zeydan’s candidacy.
Voters in Van and other southeastern provinces protested the earlier decision and clashed with the police before the reversal.