The mayor of Izmir, Türkiye's third-largest city and a bastion of its secular opposition, joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling AK Party on Wednesday.
Cemil Tugay, elected mayor in 2024 as a candidate of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) before quitting in June, formally joined the AK Party at a ceremony in Ankara, handing the ruling party the mayoralty of a city.
"I have no doubt that, with harmony between the local administration and central government, we will achieve great things," Tugay said.
The move is a significant symbolic gain for the ruling AK Party in the western coastal city, long regarded as the heartland of Türkiye's secular, social democratic opposition.
The religiously and socially conservative AK Party, founded by Erdoğan in 2001, has never won the Izmir metropolitan municipality despite dominating national politics for more than two decades.
Tugay won the March 2024 election with 49% of the vote, against 37% for the AK Party candidate. The CHP also won 28 of Izmir's 30 district municipalities.
Tugay resigned from the CHP in June after a court ruling that annulled the CHP 2023 congress and stripped Özgur Özel of his title as CHP chairman. However, he did not join the New Party founded by Özel and 90 opposition MPs in protest over the court ruling and continued as an independent mayor.
"Those who want to serve their cities in peace see the AK Party as the safest address," Erdoğan said.
"This is the reason for the growing support for the AK Party. Any suggestion otherwise is slander and speculation."
Tugay is the second mayor of a large city to defect to the AK Party from the CHP, after Özlem Çerçioğlu, mayor of Aydın, another western coastal city. Dozens of district mayors elected from opposition parties in 2024 have also joined the AK Party since then.
