Ankara

Mansur Yavaş (Turkish pronunciation: [mɑnˈsuɾ jɑˈvɑʃ]; born 23 May 1955) is a Turkish lawyer and politician who is currently the Mayor of Ankara, holding the office since April 2019. He was elected in the 2019 local election as the candidate of the Nation Alliance, an opposition alliance formed by the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Good Party. A lawyer by profession, Yavaş originally entered politics as a nationalist politician. He was the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Mayor of Beypazarı, a district of Ankara, in the 1999 local elections. He served until 2009 and left the MHP in 2013. He joined the CHP the same year and was the CHP's candidate for Mayor of Ankara in the 2014 local election, where official results claimed that he had lost by 1 percentage point. The elections were disputed and were even referred to the European Court of Human Rights due to alleged fraud and irregularities. Despite briefly leaving the CHP, Yavaş returned to politics before the 2019 local elections to stand again as the CHP's candidate, this time with support from the Good Party (which formed the Nation Alliance together with the CHP). He was elected with 50.9% of the vote. Yavaş has received praise for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ankara, where he announced that wages for municipal workers would continue being paid and that street cats and dogs would continue to be fed despite the closure of restaurants and cafes.[1] He has also been credited with substantially reducing the municipality's budget deficit by eradicating spending seen as 'wasteful'. According to Piar Araştırma, Yavaş had a satisfaction rating of 73.2% in 2020, greater than Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu or President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the highest of mayors polled.[3] Mansur Yavaş also currently holds the highest approval rating of any Turkish politician at 61%. Mansur Yavaş won the 2021 World Mayor Capital Award