Turkey elections: The beginning of the end for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

analysis

Türkiye
Defeat in Istanbul or: The beginning of the end for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

President Erdoğan appears surprisingly humble after heavy losses in the local elections. His closest competitor – Istanbul’s mayor İmamoğlu – is definitely recommended as his successor.

You don’t know that from him – humility – but Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had no choice when he stepped up to the microphone on Sunday night as the election loser: The message from the voters had arrived, said the Turkish president, and the time had now come for self-criticism and drawing conclusions , a turning point.

Erdoğan had made these local elections a vote on himself. He had toured the country as if it were about the lease in the presidential palace, not the provincial town halls. The fact that his ruling party, the AKP, now has to hand over many of these to the opposition, especially the social democratic CHP, surprised even long-time experts. It is a sign that he has not yet choked democracy in his country unconscious.

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Erdoğan’s nationalistic tale of self-produced cars and fighter jets, of a Turkish astronaut in space, all of this no longer holds water in the face of a crashing economy. Many Turks want political change. And they see him above all in a man who emerges from these elections as the big winner: Ekrem İmamoğlu, the new and old mayor of Istanbul.

İmamoğlu makes no secret of the fact that he is seeking Erdoğan’s position

Turkey’s largest city by far was in the spotlight in these elections. Erdoğan, himself from Istanbul and at the top of the city in the 1990s, lost the metropolis to İmamoğlu in 2019.

The 52-year-old appeared in front of his supporters on election night a few hours before the president. With the hotter voice of a victor he shouted to her: “Today one-man rule is over!” The CHP man makes no secret of the fact that he is seeking Erdoğan’s position as head of state. He was denied a candidacy for the presidential election in May 2023 because party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu seized control of it himself. Even back then it was tight for top dog Erdoğan. Kılıçdaroğlu only lost in the runoff.

Now it is up to İmamoğlu, as most likely the next presidential candidate in 2028, as the most charismatic opponent Erdoğan has ever had. In his humbling speech, the head of state emphasized: These elections are “not the end.” But they could easily be the beginning of the end.