ABB denies claims that Mansur Yavaş will change parties

Ankara Metropolitan Municipality (ABB) stated that claims about Mayor Mansur Yavaş joining a different political party have 'repeatedly been denied yet persistently brought up,' and requested that these claims not be given credence.

The statement came immediately after AKP Deputy Chairman Hasan Basri Yalçın said on CNN Türk on October 9: 'I won't name names, but there's a metropolitan mayor in line, we'll see very soon.'

Yavaş met with President Tayyip Erdoğan at Beştepe on September 9 and resigned from the CHP on September 23. These developments entered public discourse simultaneously with İzmir Metropolitan Mayor Cemil Tugay's departure from the CHP and joining the AKP on October 7. A year earlier, Tugay had called an AKP move a 'one-in-a-million possibility' and 'shameful.'

Which direction Yavaş will take politically going forward remains uncertain, as the content of his meeting with Erdoğan has not been shared with the public.