ISTANBUL — Turkey’s electoral authorities on Monday ordered a rerun of the election for the mayor of Istanbul, annulling a crushing electoral defeat for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan but raising the prospect that the highly contentious decision would usher in social unrest and a new economic crisis.

The opposition Republican People’s Party had denounced demands for a new election as a bid by Mr. Erdogan and his party to undo the will of the voters, who handed a narrow but bitterly contested victory to the opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, during March 31 local elections.

Mr. Imamoglu has already been declared winner, was awarded the mandate as mayor, and has taken up office. Opposition party leaders gathered in an emergency meeting after the ruling Monday.

An opposition lawmaker, Mahmut Tanal, described the decision on Twitter as “the murder of law” and “a black stain.”

The loss of Istanbul, the country’s largest city and commercial capital, had been deeply wounding for Mr. Erdogan, and one of the worst defeats of his long political career. Over his 18 years in power, the city has remained his political base and private fief, as well as a source of great wealth and prestige for his family and inner circle.

Though Mr. Erdogan secured another five-year term with sweeping powers last year, he was rendered suddenly vulnerable by the poor showing in local elections of his Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P.

His party also lost control of the capital, Ankara, as well as several important industrial towns in southern Turkey. But the defeat in Istanbul was an especially bitter pill to swallow.

As electoral officials prepared to certify that the opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, had narrowly won, the president and his party alleged irregularities so broad that they took the extraordinary step of petitioning for the election to be held over.

Mr. Erdogan’s party made its last-ditch appeal on the grounds that banned officials and voters had taken part in the election and that thousands of names had been dropped unlawfully from the electoral rolls.

But the proof they offered was far from overwhelming and mainly focused on allegations of a conspiracy.

Well-informed Turkish political analysts, speaking on condition that they not be named for fear of retribution from the palace, said Mr. Erdogan was furious at the loss of Istanbul.

By one account, he threw a tantrum on the night of the election, which was ultimately decided by a margin of some 13,000 votes.

According to another account, the ruling party’s candidate, Binali Yildirim, a former prime minister and close ally of the president, was ready to cede the election but was stopped at the last minute and made to declare victory, most probably by Mr. Erdogan himself.

But for once, the opposition parties were well organized. They had formed an alliance and persuaded their backers to vote tactically. They also stationed supporters to monitor the count in every polling station.

The opposition candidate for the Republican People’s Party, Mr. Imamoglu, insisted he was ahead and had the documentation to prove it.

There followed a flurry of conflicting messages and political maneuvering from Mr. Erdogan’s camp as the leadership played for time.

Mr. Erdogan himself at times seemed to be ready to concede, amid warnings in Turkey and abroad that he risked social chaos and a deeper economic crisis if he tried to cancel the election.

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the American messaging on the issue was that, “Turkey is in economic crisis but Turkey has a record of growth and can bounce back if the policy environment looks stable.”

The day after the High Election Council confirmed Mr. Imamoglu’s mandate as mayor, Mr. Erdogan gave a prepared speech signaling that he would accept defeat.

“Especially in the sensitive period we are in, it is important that the politicians should act responsibly,” the president said. “Leaving the election debates behind, it is imperative to focus on our real agenda, primarily the economy and security.”

The tone was conciliatory. “The time is to cool the red-hot iron, to embrace each other and strengthen our unity,” he added.

But ultimately, Mr. Erdogan joined the effort to fight a series of humiliating results.

Behind the scenes through the late hours of election night and the days that followed, a fierce power struggle was unfolding between a tight circle of ambitious, hawkish officials around the president who were determined to hold on to Istanbul, and a wider circle of older heads in the party who advised acknowledging defeat in the city.

In his balcony speech at his party’s headquarters in Ankara at 1 a.m. on election night, Mr. Erdogan acknowledged, if somewhat obliquely, the loss of Istanbul. “The people gave away the municipality, but handed the district councils to A.K.P.,” he said.

Abdulkadir Selvi, a columnist known for his close contacts in the government, said last week that those remarks “showed he accepted” the result.

“But after that, with the influence of those circles around him that I identified as a group, he made himself believe that he might get results with the appeal process,” Mr. Selvi added.

That group is believed to be led by Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak, 41, who was promoted to minister of finance and treasury last year. The interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, 49, has also emerged as an aggressive player.

Mr. Erdogan never went as far as claiming victory, but he did play for time, and he and his allies immediately began trying to reverse the outcome in Istanbul.

The morning after the election, the judge heading the High Election Council confirmed that Mr. Imamoglu was indeed ahead in the race, but the count dragged on and was only completed two days after the election.

Party officials then issued a deluge of objections and appeals across Istanbul’s 39 districts to challenge the numbers. Recounts were ordered in five districts and invalid ballots examined and recounted across all districts.

Politicians, party supporters and analysts feverishly followed every recount, claim and counterclaim. The gap between the candidates narrowed bit by bit.

In its campaign, the A.K.P. had urged voters to ‘‘stamp the light bulb’’ — the party logo, which appears on the ballot sheet to aid those who have difficulty reading. Voters do not use a pen but mark their choice with an ink stamp in Turkish elections.

Some A.K.P. voters had stamped the light bulb logo on the ballot sheet, instead of placing the mark in the box provided, technically making the ballots invalid. But on re-examination of the spoiled ballots, officials allowed them to be counted. The A.K.P. slowly gained ground.

The opposition-run district of Buyukcekmece became a focus. An A.K.P. official announced that two people from the district had been arrested. They including a municipal worker in the census office who had removed over 3,000 people from the electoral rolls.

Altogether, the worker had made 7,000 irregular entries by registering people in nonexistent or half-built properties, or by adding them to buildings that were already occupied.

Mr. Imamoglu derided the claims, saying that in fact the A.K.P. had been found to be behind several efforts to register people illegally in the district. Over 700 people were removed from the electoral roll by election officials during the formal registration process earlier in the year, opposition officials said.

Attention then turned to another district, Maltepe, where both sides complained that the other was delaying the recount.

After a tense standoff over the ballot boxes, including a fistfight which injured a guard, the police stepped in and evacuated the hall. The counting resumed.

Ten days into the process, with the numbers still not showing in his favor, Mr. Erdogan said that the irregularities had been organized and criminal and that the election should be canceled. Pro-government newspapers picked up the cry.

After that, Mr. Erdogan held a meeting of his party administration, which was leaning toward applying for cancellation, according to Mr. Selvi, the columnist.

Officials were rolled out to make the case for annulling the election. Mr. Yildirim, looking far from happy, spent two hours answering reporters’ questions, but he seemed halfhearted in his demand for a rerun.

“He was always a reluctant warrior,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow with the European Council for Foreign Relations. Mr. Yildirim had given up his post as president of Parliament to run for mayor of Istanbul at Mr. Erdogan’s request.

Ali Ihsan Yavuz, deputy chairman of the A.K.P., delivered three suitcases of documents to the High Election Council and gave an hourslong briefing to reporters with a PowerPoint display.

There had been forgery, fraud and unlawfulness, he said.

Nine ballot-box officials had been purged from their public posts, so their appointment as election officials was unlawful, he said, adding that the government was deepening its investigation around the two people arrested in Buyukcekmece in connection with registration and census irregularities.

He suggested that officials purged in the extensive government crackdown since the failed coup of 2016 should not be allowed to vote. A further complaint claimed that 41,000 ineligible voters may have voted unlawfully.

The opposition held that their objections were baseless.

“When ice starts to melt, you cannot stop it,” said Mr. Tanal, the opposition lawmaker, who drew attention for sleeping on sacks of ballot papers to protect the vote. “The A.K.P. has started to melt down. No one can stop it.”

Follow Carlotta Gall on Twitter: @carlottagall.

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