2004 Turkish local elections

2004 Turkish local elections

← 1999 March 28, 2004 (2004-03-28) 2009 →
All 16 metropolitan and 3,193 district municipal mayors of Turkey All 3,208 provincial and 34,477 municipal councillors of Turkey
Majority party Minority party Third party   Leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Deniz Baykal Devlet Bahçeli Party AK Party CHP MHP Leader since 14 August 2001 30 September 2000 6 July 1997 Last election New party 373 mayors, 11.08% 247 mayors, 3,579 councillors, 10.45% Mayors 1,762 469 247 Councillors 18,913 6,023 3,579 Popular vote^ 13,477,287 5,882,810 3,372,249 Percentage 41.67% 18.23% 10.45% Swing 41.67% 7.15% 6.72%
Results map showing the winners of the 81 provincial capitals of Turkey by party. ^ Four different elections in order to elect both types of councillor and mayor were held on the same day. The results shown here are the provincial councillor election results, which best reflect the overall voting intentions of the electorate. See the results section for the full results.

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The Turkish local elections of 2004 were held throughout the eighty-one Provinces of Turkey on 28 March 2004 in order to elect both mayors and councillors to local government positions. All 16 metropolitan and 3,193 district municipalities were up for election, while 3,208 provincial and 34,477 municipal councillors were also elected. More than 50,000 neighbourhood presidents (muhtars) were also elected, though these do not have any political affiliations.

With almost 42 percent of votes across the country, the ruling AKP increased the 34 percent it won in the 2002 national parliamentary elections by an extra 8 percent. The only opposition party with representation in Parliament, the Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP), received 19 percent of the votes. The traditional parties of the Turkish establishment lost further ground. The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), despite suffering a loss of 6% in their popular vote share, won above 10% of the votes. This bode well for their 2007 general election prospects, since 10% is the election threshold needed to win seats in Parliament.

In the event, the CHP was only able to maintain a degree of support in the provincial regions on the Turkish west coast. Among the four major cities the party was only able to win Izmir, with the AKP winning a majority in the cities of Istanbul, Adana and the Turkish capital, Ankara. The AKP also took the tourist centre Antalya, where the head of the CHP, Deniz Baykal, was the party’s candidate.

The main political arm of the Kurdish nationalist movement, the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), entered these elections in a coalition with five small socialist parties, yet together these parties received fewer votes (5 percent) than the DEHAP received alone in the 2002 elections (6.1 percent).^[1]