Municipal Elections: It’s Pretty Lonely Up There

Just when most everyone inside the country and abroad basically gave up on any development in Turkey that could be considered as advancing democracy, the Turkish electorate surprised them, big time. Such were the results of the municipal elections when the opposition succeeded beyond the imagination of even the most hopeful partisan.

The country, pigeonholed as the authoritarian Erdoğanland showed that it still had plenty of democratic reflexes, oppositional resilience, and resistance energy. Arguably, given the number of women elected to mayoralty even in ultraconservative towns or cities, the vote at least in part reflected a growing unease and a rebellion against what political scientist Şebnem Gümüşçü called the "stealth Islamization" policies of the ruling party.

The opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP), now under a new, more dynamic and youthful management emerged from the elections as the leading party (37,7%) based on the distribution of votes for city council seats. In addition to the three largest metropolitan centers of İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir, for the first time in 21 years the party broke off from the confines of its coastal ghettos. It won the mayoralties of major cities in deep, conservative Anatolia as well, some for the first time in Republican history.

What changed since the Presidential elections?

The reason why the results came as such a surprise to many observers was the fact that just ten and a half months ago, in the Presidential and Parliamentary elections, the Turkish secular opposition missed the opportunity to end the rule of AKP (along with its partner, the nationalist National Movement Party -MHP since 2015) that has outlived its usefulness, that was now taking far more from the country than it was giving to it.

Then, building his campaign on the terrorist threat, accusing the main opposition to be in cohorts with the outlawed, insurrectionist PKK because the Kurdish party supported the main opposition candidate, Erdoğan hardened his line. By relying on a narrative of national security, big steps in military technology and prowess he managed to win another term for himself. That he generously showered money on various critical constituencies and by the time of the elections the economy gave the illusion of recovery also helped.

But as important as Erdoğan’s harsh and polarizing narrative and the dispensation of money from the treasury, was the weakness and unattractiveness of the opposition candidate to the middling voters. The electorate was not convinced that the opposition coalition that looked like a bad patchwork was ready or capable of assuming the responsibility to rule the country, certainly not with that particular Presidential candidate, the uninspiring Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Clearly, the Turkish opposition had a "viable, attractive leadership" problem.

With its hopes dashed, the secular opposition that usually commands 48% of the vote nationally, went into sulking. Apathy and alienation from everything political became widespread. Of course, protection against the hurricane of the economic crisis took precedence over everything else as well. While licking their wounds, the predominantly urban and educated classes, especially the youth, who did not want to experience another May-like disappointment, surrendered to a deep weariness and indifference and many wowed to never vote for the opposition again.

Equally critical though, as Professor Evren Balta notes in her assessment of the elections, was the alienation and disappointment of Erdoğan’s poor, loyal supporters who increasingly felt ignored and thought that their concerns and the hardships they suffer because of wrong-headed economic policies are dismissed off hand.

Ultimately, a good chunk of that electorate ended up either staying at home, shifting their support to YRP, and more astonishingly crossing the line and voting for the CHP for the first time ever in their lives.

The success of administrative success and of anti-polarization politics

Somewhat unexpectedly though, as the date of the local elections approached, the society started to mobilize. Whether this was because the economic crisis was hitting hard, or because all institutions were falling apart, or because the secular sphere of life was increasingly under siege or a combination of these can be analyzed further.

It was as if the dead soil sprinkled over society had been shaken off. Concerns intensified that if the government continued its present course the country would sink further into darkness in the four years ahead with no scheduled elections and therefore no chance to turn things around.

It finally sank that the local elections were a final opportunity to halt the course AKP was taking towards a darker future. The fact that the team that condemned the CHP to defeat in May and left the opposition in total despair was finally overthrown at the Party Congress and replaced by a younger and more vigorous team was also an auspicious development.

It is in this environment that the country went to the polls. On the night of his victory of the Presidency on May 28, President Erdoğan announced that his target was “winning back İstanbul” in the municipal elections. Istanbul indeed has a fifth of the country’s population and is its nerve center in finance, commerce, culture and tourism and it is the source of immense patronage. That is where Erdoğan’s march to being the most dominant figure of Turkish politics since Kemal Atatürk began and the city holds an unequalled symbolism in Islamist imagination.

İmamoğlu already defeated Erdogan twice. In 2019 he won over Erdogan’s handpicked sidekick with a slight margin and when the electoral council in a ridiculous ruling asked that the mayor’s race be repeated, he crushed his opponent in a landslide. In the past five years despite obstructionism from the central government and stonewalling from the city council where he did not have the majority, he governed the city well. Services improved, investments were made and most importantly he proved that lifestyle matters were not his concern. He could touch all constituencies and broke the barriers of polarization on the existence of which which Erdogan thrived.

The defeat of AKP’s non-descript candidate in this year’s elections, despite all the pressures, lies, tricks, threats, and the Council of Ministers working as campaign officials, was a defeat for Erdoğan. He spent the last two days of the campaign in Istanbul, visiting a religious brotherhood and praying in Hagia Sophia. With this defeat Turkey’s perennial problem of leadership transition/succession, that is who could hold the mantle after Erdogan was arguably solved. The result inevitably identified Ekrem İmamoğlu as the main contender for the leadership of the country in the new period that would follow the exhausted, rotten, unimpressive end of the AKP regime.

The next four years will witness a contest between central power and local power. No doubt Erdoğan will use the power central government dispenses of to hamper the success of CHP-held municipalities as he did in the past. But he will first have to put the economy back on track. His "unorthodox" -others might say fantasy policies- led to an erosion of institutional integrity and condemned the country to the second highest rate of inflation in the world. He will also be weakened because the patronage networks of too many municipalities are now lost to him and it would be more difficult to grease the wheels of those networks and keep cronies, allies, dependent constituencies happy.

The struggle will continue and how the opposition collectively reacts to the Van scandal may well determine the trajectory the country will be on for the next few years.

If the CHP local governments manage to repeat the successes of the İstanbul and Ankara municipalities in reaching out to diverse constituencies, provide services to the hard-hit poor and elderly of major cities and thus ingratiate themselves to traditionally conservative constituencies they can muster a lot of power. To the extent that Ekrem İmamoğlu’s style which obviously resonated in deep Anatolia nearly as much as Istanbul can be extended to other mayors and the de-polarizing rhetoric as well as a socially conscious municipal government mentality prevails, the next Presidential elections may present to the world a new Turkey.

The road is long, the path is rough, the power holders unforgiving and ruthless but the aspiration is still within reach.

Copyright image : Yasin AKGUL / AFP