Everyone agrees that these local elections they are not like any of the previous ones. In two days, millions of Turkish voters will vote for their local rulers and municipal councilors across the country. But all eyes are on Constantinople, a huge city of 16 million inhabitants where the mayoral race is theoretically being held between the current mayor and main opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu and his rival from the ruling coalition, Murat Kurum.

As reported by SKAI’s Istanbul correspondent Manolis Kostidis, the polling company SONAR, which had found the result of the presidential elections in 2023, reports in a new poll that Imamoglou leads with a “clear” lead 7 percentage points against Erdogan’s “chosen”.. In fact, the sample is quite large (4,288 people).

Specifically, according to the poll findings, Imamoglu (Republican People’s Party – CHP) collects 47.3%, Kourum (Justice and Development Party – AKP) scores 40.4%, while the remaining candidates (Altinoz from the New Prosperity Party, Karamahmutoglu from the Victory Party, Danis and Cemni from the pro-Kurdish DEM and Kavountzu from the Good Party) achieve single-digit percentages.

But in reality, Imamoglu’s opponent is not the weak and colorless Murat Kurum, but President Erdogan himself. The Turkish president is determined not to lose and wants to consolidate his power after the 2023 elections.

He wants to retake Constantinople not only for reasons of religious identity, not only because he turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque, but also because in a period of severe economic crisis he will gain control of a city with an annual budget of 6.6 billion dollars, which could be used for state policies.

It is clear that the latest polls show a steady rise of Ekrem Imamoglu. In fact, journalistic sources reported today that and in an internal poll of the AKP Imamoglu leads Kuroum by 5.3 points, after the distribution of undecideds. An Imamoglu victory now looks more likely than the pollsters, although the same pollsters failed miserably in last year’s election. However, a victory for the current mayor would make him the the only one who defeated Erdogan for the second time, but also as the natural leader of the PLK, which, however, in a later phase would perhaps cause problem in the unity of the official opposition party.