By getting personally involved in the campaign, Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave Sunday’s local elections in Turkey a national resonance. The setback for his party therefore turns out to be a snub for the strong man of the country since 2003.
The president had to concede on Sunday the historic victory of the opposition in the municipal elections, which according to him constitutes a “turning point” for his camp. After counting 95% of the ballot boxes, the Turkish opposition inflicted its worst electoral debacle on the head of state’s AKP (Islamo-conservative) party.
Erdogan will “respect the decision of the Nation”
The main opposition party, the CHP (social democrat), claimed victory in Istanbul and Ankara, the two largest cities in Turkey, and was preparing to capture many others, such as Bursa, a large industrial city in northwest acquired by the AKP since 2004. From his party headquarters in Ankara and in front of a dejected and silent crowd, the president promised to “respect the decision of the Nation”.
Shortly before, the outgoing mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, announced his re-election at the head of Turkey’s largest city, which he conquered in 2019, without even waiting for the official results to be announced. In Ankara, CHP mayor Mansur Yavas, well in the lead, had also already claimed victory. “The voters have chosen to change the face of Turkey,” said CHP leader Ozgur Ozel.
In addition to Izmir, the country’s third city and stronghold of the CHP, and Antalya where opposition supporters began to celebrate victory in the streets, the main opposition group achieved a spectacular breakthrough in Anatolia. She is leading the race in provincial capitals long held by the AKP.
President Erdogan had nevertheless thrown all his weight into the campaign, particularly in Istanbul, the economic and cultural capital of which he was mayor in the 1990s and which switched to the opposition in 2019. But the commitment of the head of the The State, which announced at the beginning of March that these elections were “its last”, was not enough.
A defeat that reshuffles the cards for 2028
The AKP candidates, however, remained in the lead in several large cities in Anatolia (Konya, Kayseri, Erzurum) and the Black Sea (Rize, Trabzon), strongholds of President Erdogan, while the pro-Kurdish party DEM secured a comfortable lead in several large cities in the Kurdish-majority southeast, including Diyarbakir, the informal capital of Turkey’s Kurds.
For Erdogan, the defeat of his party risks having serious consequences. The mayor of Istanbul, subscribed to the podium of the Turks’ favorite political figures, never ceases to pose as a direct rival to the head of state, who nevertheless portrayed him as a “part-time mayor” devoured by his national ambitions. For many observers, the mayor of Istanbul now has a route to the 2028 presidential election.