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The election results are a wake-up call. The result shows that he is no longer as invulnerable as he thinks...
When Turkish voters cast their ballots in Sunday's municipal elections, they didn't just vote for their mayors and local administrators. They sent a message to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had turned the vote into a referendum on his governance.
He campaigned hard using the vast state resources at his disposal and even threatened to deny voters services if candidates from his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost. The historic victory of the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), is not just a loss for the AKP, but a measure of the declining support of the Turkish strongman. It also provides a much-needed corrective to ideas about how Turkish politics works.
After Erdogan's presidential election victory last May, Turkey appeared to defy the accepted wisdom that it is the economy that matters most to voters. Analysts from both the pro- and anti-Erdoğan camps lined up to explain how he won despite growing economic problems that were exacerbated by a devastating earthquake in February 2023. Some argued that Erdogan's supporters are standing by him. Others claimed that the president had consolidated the autocracy so much that it could not be defeated at the ballot box. CHP's success in Sunday's municipal vote proves both camps wrong. It shows that despite the uneven playing field, elections matter and voters vote with their wallets.
Those who are skeptical about elections under a strongman like Erdogan have some right. Elections in Turkey are neither free nor fair. Like most autocrats, Erdogan uses the state machinery to change election results, imprison or intimidate his opponents, and flood the airwaves with biased coverage. But despite all this, the Turkish opposition managed to win a historic victory. The CHP not only added to the municipalities it won five years ago, but also became the country's most popular party in terms of total votes – a first since the party's heyday in the 1970s.
For many opposition supporters, the victory came late. They expected to oust Erdogan last year, when the government's weak response to the earthquake and Turkey's growing economic problems fueled popular discontent with his rule. But the opposition parties failed. They put forward an uninspiring candidate who led an impatient and ideologically diverse six-party coalition.
Things are different this time. At the helm of the CHP is an energetic new leader, Özgür Özel, who replaced Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu after last year's election. The party's mayoral candidates are charismatic figures such as Ekrem İmamoğlu, who defeated AKP challengers in Istanbul three times since 2019.
In the run-up to the March election, Erdogan was so confident about his candidates' prospects that he nominated Murat Kurum, the former urban affairs minister known for his role in the government's faltering response to earthquakes, as the party's candidate. his for Istanbul, a city where the fear of the earthquake seems great.
Developments on the economic front also worked in favor of the opposition. Although Turkey's economy has been struggling for some time, the crisis deepened after last year's elections. High prices are causing misery for the poor and impoverishing the middle class, especially in big cities. People in the earthquake zone are also disappointed with Erdogan. Many had voted for him after he promised to rapidly build a large number of new homes after the earthquake. But 12 months later, hundreds of thousands of them remain in shelters. Adding to their anger, the government has failed to hold people accountable for faulty construction that greatly worsened the death toll.
All these factors created the perfect storm and the opposition capitalized on it. Erdogan's job is safe for now. But the election results are a wake-up call. The result shows that he is more vulnerable than he thinks. To stay in power, he must fix the economy and address Turkey's growing problems. His dream of remaining president for life by changing the Constitution to run again in 2028 is now more distant.
More importantly, Sunday's vote shows that Erdogan did not win last year's election, the opposition lost it. Now it's up to Turkey's newly energized opposition to prove that all politics is not local. With the opportunity to deliver good governance and smart investment at the municipal level across Turkey, the CHP can prove that it is ready to repeat this local victory at the national level in the upcoming elections. /Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Finacial Times"
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