Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived at a polling station in Istanbul to cast his vote in Istanbul’s mayoral election rerun, Sunday, June 23. Millions of Istanbul residents voted Sunday, in a re-run of a mayoral election that has become a referendum on President Erdogan’s policies and a test of Turkey’s ailing democracy. In the initial March 31 vote, the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate secured a narrow victory over Erdogan’s AK Party (AKP) in Turkey’s largest city, a rare electoral defeat for the president. But after weeks of AKP appeals, Turkey’s High Election Board in May annulled the vote citing irregularities. The opposition called the decision a coup against democracy, which has raised the stakes for round two.