Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, continues to "bleed" and lose voters to opposition parties, with expectations of the biggest loss in the upcoming local elections.
The decline in the popularity of the Justice and Development Party, in light of the growing popularity of the National Movement Party and the opposition Republican People's Party in the country, according to the latest polls, according to the newspaper "Ahwal" Turkish on Sunday.
Local elections in Turkey will take place on March 31, 2019 in 81 provinces in the country.
The Justice and Development Party won 18 of the 30 municipalities in the 2014 election with 60 per cent of the vote.
"The AKP's association with the community is much weaker than that of the MHP," Kemal Ozkiraz, head of the Eurasia Center for Public Opinion Research in Turkey, was quoted as saying.
"Over time, the AKP has become the state party and the bureaucracy," he said.
The AKP will receive 38 per cent of the vote, while the CHP will receive 33 per cent of the support, narrowing the gap between the opposition party and the ruling party in Turkey, Ozkeraz said.
While the percentage of people who said 10 years ago that they would never vote for the opposition Republican People's Party was about 70 per cent, that figure had fallen to 30-40 per cent these days.
Such cities as Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir will play a pivotal role in the upcoming local elections, especially if opposition parties are able to run in the elections with two candidates.
He stressed that the Justice and Development Party will suffer the largest loss of votes, as it is likely to go a large proportion of the votes of the Justice and Development Party to the Republican People's Party.
