The results arrive during the Iftar dinner which closes the day of fasting. Ankara, Istanbul, then Izmir. A red, republican stain, which delivers to President Erdogan and his Islamic-conservative party, the AKP, a crushing defeat for Ramadan in Sunday’s municipal elections, perhaps the most painful in his more than 20 years in power. While the small and medium-sized centers of central Anatolia, traditionally a fiefdom of the conservatives, have reiterated their support for the AKP, the large cities of Turkey – the first five, the capital Ankara, the rich Istanbul, the cosmopolitan Izmir, Bursa and Adana – they chose the candidates of the CHP, the main opposition party. Last year the president narrowly won the national elections in a Turkey split in half. A year later, his AKP’s consensus is declining throughout the country. It is not the end of Erdoganism, but a significant setback: the president’s leadership is now contestable, and disputed.
The opposition regains confidence
“Today our voters have made a very important decision, they have decided to establish a new policy in Turkey”, says Ozgur Ozel, the president of the CHP, emotionally on TV, sending a message of unity: “There is no loser in this victory. Our success will not be anyone’s defeat. We don’t want anyone to feel lost, whatever party they voted for.”
Imamoglu’s winning run in Istanbul
In Ankara the outgoing mayor Mansur Yavas leads his rival by more than 10 points, in Izmir Cemil Tugay leads the race with a wide gap. But it is on the Bosphorus that the most burning defeat takes place. “Whoever governs Istanbul governs Turkey”, Erdogan has always maintained, who was born in the megalopolis of 16 million inhabitants and began his political rise in the 1990s. The outgoing mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, succeeded in re-motivating an opposition that was frightened and disappointed after the defeat in the last presidential elections. Forty-three years old, a practicing Muslim, a liberal, in 2019 he wrested Istanbul from the conservatives after 25 years of AKP government by presenting himself as a man of the people: at ease with people in the markets, close to housewives who wear the headscarf and at the same time a champion of social and civil liberties, friend of workers and industrialists.
The opposition divided and the media under control
On Sunday he prevailed against the president’s candidate, the technocrat Murat Kurum, despite Erdogan putting himself personally into the electoral campaign and with a fragmented opposition, no longer having the coalition with the Kurds and nationalists behind him that had guaranteed him the election five years ago. And although the government has been able to count on the absence of pluralism which has allowed it to “impose its single discourse on all media, with clear control over public television”, reports Reporters Without Borders.
Abstention and the message to the government
Compared to the 2019 municipal elections, turnout dropped from 85% to 76%. Opposition voters went to vote in a climate that political analyst Seda Demiralp defines as one of “political apathy and alienation. But even though they were heartbroken, they saw an opportunity to regain faith in the candidates in Istanbul and Ankara.”
The victory gives them hope again and projects Imamoglu as the CHP’s strongest candidate in the 2028 presidential elections, if the mayor demonstrates not only his ability to govern but also to unite the different souls of the Turkish opposition.
The consequences for Erdogan
In the other camp, the abstention seems to have penalized the government above all and sends a clear message to Erdogan and his power group in a country where inflation is at 67% and the lira has collapsed against the dollar: “I his supporters wanted to demonstrate their disaffection by having no interest in the names and speeches presented to them,” says Demiralp. On an internal level, it is probable that the defeat will push Erdogan to review the government team, it certainly curbs the Raìs’s temptation to change the Constitution again in order to leave the door of a third mandate open, even if he continued to repeat that these were the his last elections. On the international level, it will not change Ankara’s political line nor will it curb Erdogan’s ambitions to position himself as leader of the Muslim world and mediator in the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. But the image of the single man in command is tarnished, and the world‘s powerful will take this into account in negotiations with the Raìs.