İzmir Mayor Joins AKP, Shifting Mayoral Control

Izmir Mayor Cemil Tugay joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP on Oct. 7, 2026, at a ceremony in Ankara where he received his party badge. Elected in March 2024 as a CHP candidate with 49 percent of the vote against the AKP’s 37 percent, he left the CHP in June 2026 after a court annulled its 2023 congress and stripped Özgür Özel of the chairmanship, then served as an independent. The AKP had never won the Izmir metropolitan mayoralty. The city of about 4.5 million still has an opposition-led council, with the New Party holding 93 seats to the AKP’s 38. Özel accused the AKP of blackmail and imprisonment threats to force the switch and said those who sell out are traitors. Erdoğan rejected that as slander and speculation, saying people who want to serve cities in peace see the AKP as the safest address, welcomed Tugay into the AKP family, and pledged full support for Izmir. Tugay said harmony with the central government would achieve great things and that very good things await Izmir. He is the second large-city CHP-to-AKP defector after Aydın Mayor Özlem Çerçioğlu. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, former Izmir Mayor Tunç Soyer, and other opposition mayors are jailed pending corruption trials; the opposition calls the cases politically motivated while the government says the judiciary is independent.