İzmir Mayor Cemil Tugay joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AK Party on Wednesday, shocking the Turkish left and handing the ruling party a symbolic prize it has failed to win in elections three times in a row. Erdoğan presented Tugay — who ran for mayor as centre-left CHP party candidate two years ago — with an AK Party badge at the party's Ankara headquarters on Wednesday morning and welcomed him in a speech to MPs at the opening of the legislative year. "İzmir is different today. Very enthusiastic," Erdoğan said. "Good things await İzmir," Tugay told reporters. Tugay reversed a series of public pledges that he would never join the ruling party, which he previously described as "not even a one-in-a-million chance.
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