Rıza Akpolat Has Been Elected the New Mayor of the Beşiktaş Municipality!

Having received 73% of the votes in our district Beşiktaş, Mr. Rıza Akpolat is the new Mayor of the Beşiktaş Municipality according to the official results of the local elections held in Beşiktaş and throughout Turkey on March 31, 2019.

Mr. Akpolat took over the Mayorship from Mr. Tahir Doğaç, who had been serving as the Acting Mayor for more than a year.

As well as Mr. Akpolat and Mr. Doğaç, the ceremony held at the City Hall in Levent was attended by some CHP deputies, vice mayors, directors, Beşiktaş councilors, neighborhood representatives, and the staff members of the Beşiktaş Municipality.

At the ceremony, Mr. Akpolat said, “After long years of service to my Party in positions such as youth branches, District Director, Head of District, Head of Province, now I’m proud to serve as the Mayor of Beşiktaş. I was born into politics and I was always inside street politics and struggle. This is a very important task that I take over now as it is a big responsibility to administer Beşiktaş. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my Party and the President of my Party Mr. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu who nominated me for this position, my colleagues, friends and especially to the residents of Beşiktaş who elected me with a record number of votes. I would also like to thank Mr. Doğaç, who took up at a very difficult period and did his real best, making a success of those hard times.”

“Beşiktaş has a great location, joining two continents together. And we need to make it a European city. Beşiktaş will forever belong to the people, always reached out by them easily through various means of communication. We will be transparent, accountable and auditable. We will never sign any contract against the will and demand of the public. We will establish city councils where we put into practice participatory administration. We will definitely carry out all the promises we made during the election process. This is our responsibility. We will administer Beşiktaş through universal principles of social democracy as Beşiktaş deserves. We will form a city constitution according to which we will rule Beşiktaş. We will take utmost care in order not to deform the history and structure of the city. The last but not the least, we will always adopt contemporary, modern and pro-Atatürk values. So these are the key points that will remain at the center of our understanding of administration and we will never make concession on them.” Mayor Akpolat added.

After the ceremony, Mayor Akpolat personally met the staff members of the Municipality and officially took office. Previous Acting Mayor Mr. Tahir Doğaç congratulated Mr. Akpolat and wished him success in his new position.