A decision by the Nuremberg city council to approve the installation of campaign posters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) on city streets around three weeks before Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections has sparked backlash.

“Due to the election campaign we have approved the placement of 25 posters outside the old town (…) from April 22 to May 5,” the city’s city council said on its Twitter account Nuremberg.

Erdogan is counting on the votes of some 1.5 million registered Turkish voters in Germany in crucial Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections. These elections, according to analysts, are one of the most difficult political tests in Erdogan’s 20-year leadership.

Many Germans strongly criticized the decision of the Nuremberg city council to give permission for the posters to be put up. A former Greens politician, Volker Beck, told Bild newspaper that Mr Erdogan and his party are “anti-democrats” who were “poisoning the political climate in Germany”.

Nuremberg city government said on twitter: “We stand neutral in both German and foreign election campaigns. Everyone has the right to put up posters within the framework of the law.”

The municipality stressed that other political parties did not ask to put up their posters, with the municipal authority clarifying that if they had done so it would have given approval for them as well.

Last Thursday the Turkish living abroad have started voting for the May 14 Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections.

Voting abroad will be possible until May 9, and 26 polling stations have opened in Germany alone, home to the largest Turkish community abroad.

In the 2018 Turkish primary election, Germany was at the center of a heated controversy, with President Erdogan accusing German authorities of obstructing his campaign efforts in the country. However, such tensions are not expected this time.

After 20 years in power, Erdogan is facing his toughest electoral challenge to date. Recent polls are predicting a head-to-head battle between the outgoing president and Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of a coalition of opposition parties.