
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, suffered a blow in local elections, with early results pointing to the loss of mayoralties in the country’s two largest cities, Ankara and Istanbul. The incumbent party went into the elections vulnerable due to a weak economic backdrop, with annual GDP growth in negative territory and both inflation and unemployment elevated. Indeed, Turkey’s ‘misery index’, which adds together headline CPI inflation and the unemployment rate, has risen sharply higher over the past year or so. Since 2005, this measure of household wellbeing has averaged less than 20%.