Türkiye’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) candidate Murat Kurum has claimed polls are placing him ahead of his main rival Ekrem Imamoğlu in the mayoral race for Istanbul.

Less than two months until the local elections on March 31, Kurum, a former environment, urban planning and climate change minister, said he overtook incumbent mayor Imamoğlu by 1.5 points in polls conducted a week before he launched his campaign last month.

"Before that, I was two points behind him," Kurum told a private television interview on Wednesday night. "You can see the same results in the CHP’s surveys, too," he said, referring to the main opposition, the Republican People's Party.

"They believe they’re 8-10 points ahead of us. They’re trying to put themselves in a different position and chasing after irrelevant matters because they cannot focus on Istanbul," Kurum argued.

He added: "Without resting on our oars, we will make our true municipalism vision come true with all Istanbulites on March 31."

Some 64 million eligible voters are set to elect mayors and local administrators in 81 provinces in March this year, but the mayoral race for Istanbul and the capital Ankara, both of which have been run by the CHP since it clinched a surprise victory in the 2019 elections for the first time in over two decades, hog most of the public attention.

The AK Party, eager to recapture the two key cities from the opposition, unveiled its election declaration earlier this week as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to "save Türkiye from a whirlpool of failures by delivering true municipalism."

While the party is relying on Turgut Altınok against incumbent Mayor Mansur Yavaş of the CHP in Ankara, the race for Istanbul is flashier since the city is considered, politically, the most important administrative region in the country.

Last week, Kurum kicked off his campaign in a big ceremony, promising to alleviate Istanbul’s notorious traffic congestion, public transport delays, and malfunctions that became a major source of residents discontent among and to provide safe housing in the 39 districts of Istanbul, which largely sits on a fault line.

His opponent, Imamoğlu, who is facing a political ban in an ongoing lawsuit, has lost some of his luster since he won Istanbul with the backing of smaller opposition parties in a controversial rerun in the 2019 elections.

After the opposition lost to Erdoğan’s ruling coalition in the general elections, he mounted a coup at the CHP last summer to replace Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu with his favored man, Özgür Özel. But his meddling in Özel’s affairs has deepened the rift at Türkiye’s oldest political party, with insiders lamenting quarrels between the mayor and the chair on the candidate selection process.

The CHP’s odds are rapidly dwindling as former allies, including the nationalist Good Party (IP), are fielding their own mayoral candidates after rejecting Özel’s offer of forming another alliance.

The IP has named a relatively unknown candidate for Istanbul, but the PKK-affiliated Green Left Party (YSP), informally known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and previously going by Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), is still negotiating with the CHP on cooperating in western metropolitan cities.

Although the party is closer to competing with its own candidates, pundits have said it could also endorse Imamoğlu in Istanbul.

The YSP could complicate the CHP mayor’s odds, however, by nominating an unexpected candidate, Basak Demirtaş, the wife of HDP’s jailed former leader Selahattin Demirtaş, who said she would consider running for Istanbul if the party approves of it. Demirtaş himself has been in prison since 2016 for spreading terrorist propaganda and having ties to the PKK and retired from active politics last June.

All eligible 35 parties must submit their candidates to the authorities by Feb. 20 at the latest. Campaigning and certain election bans will take effect on March 21, a week before the polls.