Voters lost patience not only with the cost of living crisis driven by 70% inflation, but also with Erdogan’s divisive political style.
In a major upset for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s main opposition party, the republican people’s party (CHP) led by Ozgur Ozel, retained its control over key cities and made huge gains elsewhere across the country. The results stunned Erdogan and his ruling Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP) and was seen as a punishment by voters for skyrocketing inflation which has left many households struggling to afford basic goods. “The voters decided to establish a new political order in Turkey”, said Ozel addressing a jubilant crowd of supporters. “Today, the voters decided to change the 22-year-old picture in Turkey and open the door to a new political climate in our country.” This was the first time since Erdogan came to power 21 years ago that his party was defeated across the country at the ballot box and has shattered his aura of invincibility.
Before the election, Erdogan had campaigned in more than 50 of the country’s 81 provinces to support the AKP mayoral candidates and, although the elections were local, some saw them as a personal referendum on Erdogan and his attempt to gain an extra layer of legitimacy to pursue his agenda. A strong showing for the AKP would have hardened Erdogan’s resolve to usher in a new constitution, one that would reflect his conservative values and allow him to rule beyond 2028 when his current term ends. In the event, the CHP won 35 out of 81 municipalities, including mayoral victories in Turkey’s five largest cities: Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Antalya. Notably, 11 of the new mayors are women. The CHP claimed the outcome as a “historic victory”, winning about 38% support nationwide, more than 2 points ahead of the AKP, and its best showing since Turkey’s 1977 general election.
In Ankara, Turkey’s capital, incumbent CHP Mayor Mansur Yavas won 60.4% of the vote, far ahead of AKP opponent Turgut Altinok’s 32%. But it was in Istanbul’s mayoral race that proved to be Erdogan’s most significant upset. Incumbent Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu defeated the Erdogan-backed AKP candidate, former Environment Minister Murat Kurum, by around 10 percentage points, taking 51% of the vote. This marked the highest margin of victory for an Istanbul mayor in no less than 40 years and helped solidify Imamoglu as Erdogan’s chief opponent and likely contestant in future presidential races.
So what caused this political earthquake? Analysts say that voters lost patience not only with the cost of living crisis driven by 70% inflation, but also with Erdogan’s divisive political style. He made an abrupt U-turn in his unconventional economic policy after his triumph in the national election last year, resulting in aggressive interest rate hikes to rein in inflation expectations that had rocketed under his years-long unorthodox policy stance. It was particularly noticeable that the AKP lost control of industrial regions where many workers are on minimum wage, which has trailed inflation despite big rises.
Another factor in the AKP’s poor showing was the success of the Islamist New Welfare Party (YRP), formed just over five years ago and rooted in conservatism and Islamism. The YRP surprisingly emerged from the election as Turkey’s third biggest party, gaining 6.2% support. This ultra-conservative religious party not only wants to confine the role of women to babies and the kitchen, but wants to replace Erdogan’s heavily centralised presidential system into one based on “morality and spirituality”. The YRP benefitted by taking an even more hard-line stance than Erdogan against Israel over the Gaza conflict, a move that helped draw pious voters away from the Islamist-rooted AKP. Erdogan’s problems will grow if he moves the AKP further to the right in order to attract the YRP voters, as this will alienate those voters on the left of his party who would then turn to the CHP. He’s damned if his does and damned if he doesn’t.
Unquestionably, the one politician who came out of the contest smiling the most was the affable and popular Ekrem Imamoglu, the re-elected mayor of Istanbul and now seen as Erdogan’s main rival for the presidency. Fifty-four year-old Imamoglu is a former Turkish businessman and real estate developer who entered politics in 2008. He was mayor of Beylikduzu for five years before emerging as a dark horse candidate for mayor of Istanbul in 2019, which he won with a margin of 13,000 votes over his AKP rival. A leading member of the party of modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Ataturk, Imamoglu won despite the collapse of an opposition alliance after last year’s election defeats, reaching out to Kurds and others typically outside of the secular CHP base. “The period of one-person rule has ended of today,” Imamoglu told thousands of jubilant supporters on Sunday evening.
For his part, an unusually humble Erdogan vowed on Monday to correct any mistakes that led to his party’s defeat. In a sombre and introspective speech in the early hours of Monday morning, the President claimed that “this is not the end of us but actually a turning point. If we made mistakes, we will fix it,” he told crowds gathered at AKP’s headquarters in Ankara, without indicating what changes he might make within his party or policy. Hours later, when Turkey’s Stock Market opened on a holiday for many world financial markets, the Turkish lira, which had shed more than 80% of its value in five years, fell to another record low against the dollar while stocks rose.
Although the elections were a setback, the 70-year-old Recep Erdogan is a wily and experienced politician, who, even before the vote counting was completed, wasted no time in reminding Turkey’s population that he was in full control of all matters in the country. To illustrate his world standing he made it known that he had spoken on Sunday with the Presidents of Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, who is the favourite to become NATO’s next secretary general. He also announced that he had authorised the aerial bombing of the Kurdish militants in northern Syria and Iraq, signalling that the fight against them continues.
Although Erdogan will have been disappointed, possibly even shaken, by the result of the elections, he has plenty of time to recover in time for the next presidential election which is not due until May 2028. Loyal government ministers argue that this year’s local elections were more about discontent with the AKP than about the opposition’s popularity—as reflected in the relatively low turnout compared to past elections. For 20 years Erdogan has dominated the political scene in Turkey and although he announced in early March before the elections that he would step down, saying “with the authority that the law confers on me, this election is my last election,” few believe that he actually will. Erdogan enjoys treading the world’s stage and is fully aware of Turkey’s geopolitical value as a country intent on remaining at equal distance between NATO and Russia, confident in his proclaimed ambition for mediating for peace everywhere possible on the planet. An expert in political tap-dancing, he was often ready to shed a given foreign policy option if he found a more attractive alternative. He will do the same in domestic politics in order to improve his popularity ratings for the time he is next judged by the electorate.
Political opponents will paint the disastrous showing of Erdogan’s AKP as a humiliation for the President. Erdogan will see the result as a mere blip.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.