Election Board YSK announces final results of elections

ANKARA — Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party has officially been declared the winner of the March 30 local elections.

The chairman of the Supreme Electoral Board, Sadi Guven, announced the official results, as of 1 May, during a press conference Tuesday.

The results indicated that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party won with 45.54 percent of the votes in metropolitan municipalities.

The two opposition parties, the Republican People's Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) received 31.04 and 13.65 percent, respectively.

In municipalities, AK Party got 43.13 percent, CHP 26.45 percent and MHP 17.76 percent.

Chairman Guven said 26 political parties ran in the polls for 30 metropolitan municipalities, 51 municipalities and 961 district municipalities.

In metropolitan municipalities, a total of 36,440,968 people out of 40,727,194 eligible Turkish voters cast their ballots, equal to an 89.48 percent turnout.

Guven recalled the voter turnout was 83 percent in the 2009 local elections.

He said a total of 418,369 ballot boxes were used across Turkey.

The chairman maintained that the local elections were cancelled in two provinces, five districts and two towns and the voting will be re-held in 13 places on June 1.

As for the objections of political parties over the election results, the board accepted six out of 131 appeals from the ruling AK Party, five out of 87 from the main opposition CHP, five out of 50 from the opposition MHP, and one out of 10 from the Felicity Party.

Turkey now heads towards a presidential election in August, followed by general elections in 2015.