2009 Turkish local elections

Local elections were held in Turkey 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 AKP CHP MHP Leader since 14 August 2001 30 September 2000 6 July 1997 Last election 1,762 mayors 18,913 councillors 469 mayors 6,023 councillors 247 mayors 3,579 councillors 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 3.28pp 4.85% 5.52pp
Winners of the 81 provincial capitals 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.