President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed the provincial heads of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in charge of election affairs on Monday in the capital Ankara. Erdoğan highlighted the party’s past election successes as he called upon AK Party members to work harder to secure another victory for the AK Party in the March 31 municipal elections.

"We are not only working for winning the 18th victory of the AK Party, we are working for contributing to the beginning of the second century of the republic," he said, referring to the centenary of the Republic of Türkiye and the start of what Erdoğan earlier called the "Century of Türkiye." Under the leadership of Erdoğan and the AK Party, Türkiye made strides in all fields and won the hearts and minds of millions of voters from all across the political spectrum. The 2019 municipal elections, however, proved difficult for the party which lost key cities like Ankara and Istanbul to the main opposition.

Erdoğan said it was the "Century of Türkiye" after an end to the history of "single-party fascism, juntas, coalition governments, crises and instability" and those "missing old Türkiye" were doomed to fail in every election. "(The opposition) wants to win the municipal elections not to serve the public but simply for their own interests, to hand out personal favors to the members of their dirty alliances," he said.