Turkey's main opposition party, Republican Peoples' Party ( CHP), appealed to the country's top electoral body for an annulment of local election results in Istanbul's 39 districts, as well as last year's presidential and parliamentary elections, after the authority annulled its victory in the city's mayoral race and ordered a new vote.
Ruling in favor of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP, Turkey's Supreme Electoral Board this week ordered a re-run the March 31 vote narrowly won by opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu. The board based its decision on the fact that some officials overseeing the mayoral election were not civil servants, as required by law.
The AKP maintained that such irregularities impacted the outcome of the mayoral race.
In response, the CHP submitted a formal request for the cancellation of the Istanbul district elections and last year's general elections, arguing that non-civil servants had also supervised those ballots, the Associated Press reported.
