Supporters of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) celebrate in front of the municipality’s main building in Istanbul on March 31, 2024, following local elections across Turkey.
Yasin Akgul | Afp | Getty Images
Turkey’s opposition won an overwhelming victory in several major cities in the country’s local elections on Sunday, dealing a major blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party and handing it its biggest defeat in more than two decades.
“Those who do not understand the nation’s message will eventually lose,” Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu told thousands of supporters after vote counting showed his center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) won the megacity of Istanbul by more than a million votes had. Reuters reported.
“Tonight, 16 million Istanbulites sent a message to both our rivals and the president,” he said.
At the national level, Erdogan’s conservative Justice and Development Party, known locally as the AKP, dominates the country.
In a speech on Sunday evening, Erdogan admitted that his party had “lost height” and would work to correct its mistakes.
“If we made a mistake, we will fix it… if we are missing something, we will complete it,” he said from the balcony of the presidential palace, according to a Reuters translation. The 70-year-old Erdogan has ruled Turkey since 2003.
The major opposition wins local elections in major Turkish cities such as Istanbul, Izmir and the capital Ankara and could give the country a new direction. Erdogan himself rose to prominence as Istanbul mayor in the 1990s before later winning the presidency. Now analysts are speculating that Imamoglu’s victory in Istanbul could make him a leading candidate for the Turkish presidency in 2028.
TOPSHOT – Istanbul’s newly re-elected Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu waves as supporters of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) celebrate in front of the municipality’s main building following local elections across Turkey, March 31, 2024. Imamoglu’s second victory in an Istanbul city election cemented his reputation as Turkey’s top opposition leader and is a new blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party.
Yasin Akgul | Afp | Getty Images
Erdogan himself once said: Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.
Imamoglu, a 52-year-old former businessman, has been Istanbul’s mayor since 2019. He attempted to run for president in Turkey’s 2023 general election, but was barred from running by Erdogan’s government, which CHP supporters said was purely political. In these elections, Erdogan’s party won a major victory, leaving the AKP in the lead at the national level.
Some 61 million voters were eligible to cast their votes for mayors, council members and other administrative leaders in Turkey’s 81 provinces. Voter turnout was 76%, according to the country’s state-run Anadolu news agency. Cogeneration is said to be ahead in 36 of 81 provinces, including several of Turkey’s largest cities.
rampant inflation, economic discontent
The Turkish economy has been in a downward spiral since 2018, struggling with extremely high inflation, a weak currency and weak foreign exchange reserves. The country of 85 million people’s annual inflation rate was 67% in February and Turkey’s national interest rate is 50% – with both figures causing significant pain for the average Turkish consumer.
“Disastrous results for the ruling AKP – it failed to win major cities and may even have lost nationwide votes to the opposition CHP,” Timothy Ash, senior emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, told CNBC. “This result is all about inflation.”
Arda Tunca, an Istanbul-based economist, made a similar assessment.
“In 2019, the AKP lost major cities due to the impact of 2018 [economic] Crisis, because the crisis was particularly felt in the big cities. Now the threat of impoverishment and unemployment has spread throughout the country,” he said on X.
What is crucial, Tunca said, is that Sunday’s election result was “the first since 2002, when the AKP came to power for the first time, in which economic factors outweighed identity-related factors.”
The Turkish lira traded at 32.43 to the dollar in Istanbul on Monday morning, hovering around its record low against the American currency. The beleaguered Turkish note has lost 40% of its value against the dollar over the past year and nearly 83% over the past five years.
A “game changer” for Turkey?
The election results “could be a turning point for Turkey,” Hakan Akbas, a senior adviser at the Albright Stonebridge Group, told CNBC.
“It could breathe new life into Turkish democracy and open up new perspectives for tackling economic problems, urban planning and public services. But that’s a big if,” he said.
Many election observers predicted that this race would be a battle for the country’s opposition, which consists of the CHP and a number of other parties, many with different goals and strategies. Therefore, the big victory came as a surprise to many.
“Success will depend on the opposition’s ability to come together as a united front and develop a vision for Turkey’s future that resonates across the board,” Akbas said. The election results are also “crucial for the course of Turkey’s fiscal policy,” he added, “and could potentially usher in necessary, if unpopular, reforms.”
Opposition supporters are also hailing a victory for democracy, having previously raised concerns that increasingly autocratic tendencies in Erdogan’s government and his control over the vast majority of Turkey’s media have severely distorted the political landscape.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan speaks to journalists during the final national press conference during the NATO high-level summit at the Litexpo conference center in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 12, 2023.
Dominika Zarzycka | Photo only | Getty Images
But while Erdogan’s opponents celebrate the weekend’s result, some analysts say it is far from the end of the road for the Turkish president and his hold on power.
“Electoral unrest in today’s local elections will make it harder for Erdogan to push through his planned self-serving constitutional changes, but it is not a political game changer,” Wolfgango Piccoli, co-president of consultancy Teneo Intelligence, wrote in an analysis note. “It would be naive and wrong to assume that this setback marks the beginning of the end for Erdogan.”
The longtime Turkish leader “will not engage in greater political accommodation given his aversion to power-sharing and will not tone down his polarizing rhetoric because of this bitter defeat,” Piccoli wrote.
“Rather, he is likely to respond vigorously (but not necessarily immediately) to the challenges posed by the opposition’s victory in the local elections. In this regard, Erdogan is unlikely to abandon his plans for a new constitution or for significant changes to the current charter,” he added, referring to planned constitutional changes that would increase the power of the executive branch at the expense of opponents and other parts of the Turkish government would strengthen and expand.
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2024-04-01 11:44:26
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