AKP candidates in metropolises have no chance

Ankara. Since his election as mayor of Istanbul 30 years ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not lost a ballot – until now. In Turkey’s local elections on Sunday, candidates from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) received the most votes nationwide. Erdogan’s Islamic conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered massive losses. The defeat in Istanbul, where he began his political career in 1994, is particularly humiliating for Erdogan.

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Erdogan himself had personally supported his candidate Murat Kurum with half a dozen campaign rallies in Istanbul over the past few weeks. Nevertheless, the former environment minister clearly lost to CHP Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. Erdogan’s hope of recapturing the Bosphorus metropolis, which was won by the bourgeois-social democratic CHP in 2019, has failed.

Comment: Too early to write off Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party clearly lost in the local elections. The AKP suffered a historic defeat. He has often been declared politically dead – too early, my Gerd Hohler.

Before 2019, Istanbul was ruled by Islamic parties for 25 years. Winner Imamoglu told cheering supporters: “Turkey will now flourish in a new era of democracy!” Imamoglu said: “Those who do not understand the nation’s message will ultimately lose.”

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“Whoever wins Istanbul, Turkey wins”

Erdogan himself had declared in the past: “Whoever wins Istanbul, Turkey wins.” With 16 million inhabitants, the economic and financial metropolis is home to not only a fifth of the country’s population and generates a third of Turkey’s gross domestic product. The city also has an annual budget of around six billion euros and awards lucrative contracts. Political favors are often involved in Turkey.

The loss of Istanbul was not the only debacle for Erdogan. The CHP mayor was also able to assert himself in the capital Ankara, with a lead of 28 percentage points over the AKP candidate. The ruling party was unable to win back any of the major cities it lost to the opposition in 2019. On the contrary, the opposition gained ground: among other things, it was able to conquer conservative strongholds such as the cities of Adiyaman, Afyonkarahisar and Zonguldak.

Erdogan: “Didn’t achieve the results we expected”

In addition to the loss of Istanbul, what is particularly painful for Erdogan is that the western Turkish city of Bursa, a center of the Turkish textile and automobile industry, has now also gone to the CHP. The AKP also lost the industrial city of Balikesir to the CHP. While the AKP had won 39 cities in 2019, it was now only 24. When almost all the votes were counted on Monday morning, the largest opposition party nationwide was with a vote share of 37 percent, just ahead of the AKP with 36 percent. This has not happened since the Erdogan party’s first election victory in 2002. The CHP won 36 of the 81 provinces. The AKP was essentially only able to maintain its position in the more rural regions of Anatolia and parts of the Black Sea coast. Erdogan’s strictly religious and conservative core electorate lives there.

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In the predominantly Kurdish-populated southeastern provinces, the pro-Kurdish DEM party, as expected, won more than 60 town halls, as in 2019. After the election, however, Erdogan had most Kurdish mayors removed from office because of alleged connections to the banned terrorist organization PKK and replaced by state receivers.

How Erdogan now deals with the Kurdish local politicians could provide initial conclusions about his future course. Late on Sunday evening, the president flew from Istanbul to Ankara, where he spoke to his supporters in front of the AKP party headquarters. “Unfortunately, we did not achieve the results that we expected and hoped for,” said Erdogan. The AKP has “lost height” throughout Türkiye. But the president assured his supporters that this election was “not the end for us, but a turning point.” Erdogan announced “self-criticism”: “We will bring everything to the table, analyze it, correct our mistakes and eliminate shortcomings.”

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Erdogan: “Didn’t achieve the results we expected”

The election took place against the backdrop of an increasingly difficult economic situation. Inflation, which reached 67 percent in February, is sapping people’s purchasing power. Apartment rents, energy costs and even basic foodstuffs have become unaffordable for many. City dwellers are feeling the effects of inflation and rising prices for living space particularly severely. This explains the AKP’s great losses in the cities.

Erdogan’s interference in monetary policy is considered one of the causes of the crisis: in order to stimulate the economy with cheap loans, the Turkish central bank had to keep interest rates low for years on Erdogan’s instructions. It was only last summer that Erdogan turned things around and gave the central bank free rein to raise interest rates. Since then, the key interest rate has risen from eight to 50 percent.

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A man and a woman walk past posters of Turkey’s President Erdogan (left) and Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu (archive photo).

Imamoglu now a candidate for the office of president

The 70-year-old Erdogan has been at the head of state for over two decades, first as prime minister and since 2014 as president. He shaped Turkey like no other politician since the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who led the country from 1923 to 1938. With a constitutional reform in 2018, Erdogan abolished the parliamentary system and, as head of state, head of government and party leader, secured a level of power that no other Western head of state or government possesses. Erdogan is criticized in the West for his increasingly authoritarian style of government, the persecution of political opponents, the manipulation of the judiciary and restrictions on freedom of expression.

With these local elections, the political landscape in Turkey has changed. The 53-year-old mayor of Istanbul, Imamoglu, is now considered a candidate for the office of president after his recent election victory. He must be re-elected by 2028 at the latest. According to the provisions of the constitution, Erdogan cannot run for another term. However, he has been discussing a constitutional change for a long time, probably with the aim of securing a renewed candidacy or even a lifetime term in office. And it is uncertain whether Imamoglu will even be able to run in the next presidential election: criminal proceedings are underway against him for insult because he called the members of the Supreme Electoral Council “idiots” in 2019. For this, Imamoglu was sentenced in the first instance to two years and seven months in prison in 2022.

Government critics see Erdogan as the driving force behind the prosecution of the popular opposition politician. The human rights organization Human Rights Watch described the verdict as “politically motivated”. Imamoglu appealed. The next hearing in the Imamoglu case is scheduled for April 25th. If the verdict is confirmed in the second instance, he could be banned from politics for several years. Then Imamoglu would have to give up his mayoralty. Erdogan’s fiercest competitor would be politically sidelined.