The opposition’s stunning landslide victory in yesterday’s controversial redo of the Istanbul municipal polls has reignited hopes that Turkey’s democracy, which seemed to be in its death throes, has some fight in it still.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the once obscure former Republican People’s Party (CHP) mayor of Beylikduzu, an ugly urban sprawl on the edge of Istanbul, defeated his governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) rival Binali Yildirim by a whopping 800,000 votes compared with the measly 13,000 ballots in the first run. The result is widely seen as the biggest setback faced by the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who pressured electoral authorities to invalidate the March 31 results in Istanbul in the hope of winning this time.

Western diplomats cynically intoned that Erdogan would do so, cheating his way to victory if need be. But few counted on the apocalypse that was in store. Cheating was apparently not an option: AKP strongholds like Fatih and Uskudar, where Erdogan maintains his private residence, fell to the opposition, a resounding signal that his oversize sense of entitlement coupled with a poorly managed and polarizing campaign had backfired spectacularly.  Rising inflation and joblessness are however among the AKP’s biggest woes.

Last-ditch efforts to woo the Kurds failed. The Kurds tipped the outcome in Imamoglu’s favor in even greater numbers than they had in March. That their role proved so central is one of the most hopeful developments of the past months. Should the CHP sustain its newly liberal stance, it may nurture a sense of greater participation and belonging amid Turkey’s estimated 16 million Kurds, who live in far greater numbers in Istanbul than any other city in the world.