ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP will accept the results of local election recounts in Ankara and Istanbul no matter which party is declared the winner, a party spokesman said on Saturday.
The AKP won most votes nationwide in last Sunday’s election, but results showed the ruling party lost Ankara and was also narrowly defeated in Istanbul in what would be one of their worst setbacks in a decade and a half in power.
Electoral authorities are conducting a recount in scores of districts in Ankara and in Istanbul where tallies showed the opposition CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu with a very slim lead over the AKP.
“At the end of the day, we will accept the final result regardless of whether it is to our advantage or disadvantage,” AKP spokesman Omer Celik told a briefing for the foreign press in Istanbul.
Voters may have punished the AKP at the ballot box, with Turkey’s economy in recession after a currency crisis last year that hit Turkish households hard when the lira lost 30 percent of its value.
Losing Istanbul would be a blow to Erdogan, who built his political career as mayor of the city before becoming prime minister and later president.
In Istanbul, CHP candidate Imamoglu and the AKP’s Binali Yildirim both declared victory when preliminary results showed them in a dead heat.
The AKP later appealed saying it had found irregularities in tens of thousands of votes.
Imamoglu’s party said on Saturday he was still ahead by close to 18,000 votes with half of the recount completed. He has said he expects the recount to be finished by the end of the weekend, but the AKP could still appeal again to the Supreme Electoral Council.
Celik said the AKP would still control districts and municipal councils in both of the key cities even if they lost the mayor’s offices. But he said the party would not deliberately block opposition mayor’s agendas.
Erdogan, in power for 16 years, fought hard before the vote, holding rallies across Turkey where he described the election of mayors and district councils as a battle for the nation’s survival.
Erdogan’s ruling AKP ready to accept Turkey's election recount results
Erdogan’s ruling AKP ready to accept Turkey's election recount results
Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s memoir recounts her journey after her son’s abduction by Hamas
- Random House announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26
- “I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin said
NEW YORK: Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who has become known worldwide for her advocacy on behalf of her son and others abducted by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, has a memoir coming out this spring.
Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26.
“I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin, a Chicago-born educator who now lives in Jerusalem, said in a statement. “This book recounts the first steps of a million-mile odyssey that will take the rest of my life to walk on shattered feet.”
Goldberg-Polin also will narrate the audio edition of “When We See You Again.”
Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was attending a southern Israel music festival when militants loaded him and other hostages onto the back of a pickup truck. Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon, traveled the world calling for the release of Hersh and others, meeting with President Joe Biden and Pope Francis, speaking at the United Nations and appearing at protest rallies. Each morning, she would write down on a piece of masking tape the number of days her son had been in captivity and stick it on her chest.
She continued her efforts after Israeli officials announced in September 2024 that the bodies of her son and five others had been found in an underground tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli forensics experts said they had been shot at close range. Tens of thousands crowded into a Jerusalem cemetery as Hersh was laid to rest.
According to Random House, Rachel Goldberg-Polin will tell her story in “raw, unflinching, deeply moving prose.”
“She describes grief from within the midst of suffering, giving voice to the broken as she pours her pain, love, and longing onto the page,” announcement reads in part. “It is a story of how we remember and how we persevere, of how we suffer and how we love.”
