The World - News from March 26, 1989

Final opinion polls before today’s municipal elections in Turkey suggested that Prime Minister Turgut Ozal’s Motherland Party would lose control of two major cities to the leftist opposition. The polls predicted that the center-right Motherland Party would lose Ankara, the capital, and the Aegean port of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, to the Social Democratic Populist Party. The polls said the Motherland Party and the opposition would each win about a third of the national vote in the elections for 1,984 mayors, 24,000 councillors and 300,000 village headmen. Ozal wound up the campaign without mentioning earlier hints that he might leave office or call a snap general election if his popular support collapsed.