NYT says the result is a "stinging defeat"
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey suffered the biggest defeat of his political career on Sunday as his candidate for Istanbul mayor conceded defeat in a repeat election, two months after Mr. Erdogan’s party forced the cancellation of the same vote after it lost.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/world/europe/istanbul-mayor-election-erdogan.htmlThis is indeed fabulous news.
People who oppose Erdogan will take the fact that the runoff happened as proof that Turkey is a dictatorship.
People who support him will contend that its results show that Turkey is a democracy.
In truth both are correct: Turkey is state in which the separation of powers dont exist.
Turkey is no longer a democracy since the 2015 hung parliament was ignored for no reason.
More worryingly for Europe, Turkey outside of Istanbul has now fully veered away from its secular Kemalistic roots.
A couple of things regarding the last sentence
1) The 'secular' opposition seized Ankara from AKP three months ago and holds Izmir, so the three largest metropolitan areas are veered away from the AKP. It's true, however, that most of the country voted for the AKP-MHP alliance. Exceptions: Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Thrace, the Aegean, the Southern coast, the regions with Kurdish majority in the SE or the Alevi province
2) Anyone vindicating the secular authoritarian Ataturk is disqualified to criticize a religious conservative authoritarian like Erdogan.
I don't like the CHP very nuch (my choice is the HDP), but it's great that Erdogan lost this election
