Landslide Victory in Turkish Politics

In the municipal elections of 2024, Turkish President Erdogan experienced the biggest defeat of his political career. The main opposition party Republican People's Party (CHP) became the first party since 1977 receiving, according to unofficial results, 38.8% of the votes against the 35.6% of the ruling party AKP

Фото: Reuters/Umit Bektas 

With this victory CHP acquired 15 metropol, 21 provinces and 344 districts, roughly reversing the 2019 municipal elections. The victory of the opposition was foreseen in the latest voter preference surveys but their reports were taken with a grain of salt since the poll companies have a bad reputation and are often accused of manipulating public opinion. 

Just eight months ago in the Presidential elections, the coalition led by AKP had acquired 49.5% and the opposition coalition - five parties under the leadership of CHP - 35,04% of the votes. Both elections were contaminated with misinformation campaigns to defame CHP and even veiled threats that the opposition municipalities won’t receive support from the central government. Moreover, during the municipal elections opposition candidates of two major metropolises - Ekrem Imamoglu for Istanbul, and Mansur Yavas for Ankara - were targeted not only by the AKP and President Erdogan himself but also the leader of Iyi Party - a member of the opposition coalition in the previous elections. 

An important difference between two elections, apart from the results, is the attendance to the municipal election. It is one of the lowest which is experienced in the history of the Republic being about 11% less than the previous one. Attendance at the elections in Turkey is generally considerably higher than the Western democracies.  

The opposition, especially CHP voters, were frustrated with defeats in the elections held in the last 20 years. Different strategies were tried and failed. During the Presidential elections the previous leader of CHP Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had tried to form a coalition of six parties each from different ideologies like political left, liberal right, nationalist conservative and two parties founded by politicians who had departed from the AKP. The stormy relations of this coalition could not create the intended momentum and finally disintegrated upon completion of the elections.

The failure in the Presidential elections brought a change in the leadership of CHP. Two popular mayors of Istanbul and Capital city preferred to abstain from the leadership competition but supported the current leader Özgür Özel.

In the last twenty years CHP could never exceed 25% of the votes. It would be a mistake to attribute the current victory of 38,8% to CHP. Instead the new leadership succeeded in forming an alliance of voters in the opposition in place of a coalition of parties. Indeed Özel in his speech to celebrate their victory, called it the Alliance of Turkey.

So the victory of the opposition is thanks to two reasons. First, 11% of the Turkish voters - mainly AKP voters - decided to punish President Erdogan and did not attend to vote. The second CHP managed to form the so- called Alliance of Turkey. Under these circumstances it is expected that the opposition, encouraged by their recent victory, would seek early Presidential elections. However, Turkish voters are tired of elections as they voted for some type of elections or referendums almost every past two years and at the moment suffer financial difficulties due to high inflation. It would be wise for the opposition to delay this decision.

On the other hand, according to the constitution President Erdogan could not be a candidate for a third time except if the parliament calls for early elections. It was speculated that to circumvent the limitations for his candidacy for a third term, President Erdogan would lead Parliament to take the necessary decision. The majority of the parliamentary seats belong to the ruling coalition and extra votes could be obtained by convincing some of the opposition deputies with appropriate promises.

There were also rumours that the ruling coalition was in preparation of a new constitution that will fix many problems like reducing two stage presidential elections to one and also dropping the election threshold from 50% to 40%. Moreover, it would serve to claim that the new constitution resetted previous elections and President Erdogan could be a candidate two more times. 

That is not a fantasy as his current Presidency is actually his third and enabled with a similar reasoning. Such a proposal would be bound to be rejected by the opposition but if enough votes were acquired in the parliamentary voting, the proposal could be carried to a referendum. If the elections were to end with the victory of AKP, that would be a viable choice. After this defeat President Erdogan neither can go to early elections nor to a referendum. The early elections will be the Sword of Damocles for President Erdogan. 

The Turkish President now needs to put the Turkish economy back on track if he wants to win a fourth time in the elections. If he wants to make a new constitution, he needs to convince opposition and that will undoubtedly require democratic reforms. However, how much he is able or willing to sacrifice from his liberties is a question.

The victory of the opposition created two star leaders; one at the political left Ekrem Imamoglu and the other at the political right Mansur Yavas. Although both politicians are elected as the candidates of CHP, Yavas is an adopted politician from the nationalist conservatives and most probably will seek the leadership of the central right politics. Imamoglu will be the Presidential candidate of CHP in the coming elections. In that case CHP unusually will have two leaders one for the party Özgür Özel and one for the Turkish Presidency Ekrem Imamoglu.

Another surprise is the emergence of the New Welfare Party (YRF) - an islamist conservative party - as a rival to AKP to compete for its core constituency. In the absence of the charismatic leader President Erdogan, islamist conservative voters may head towards YRF and boost its current 6% votes remarkably raising it to the status of a major party.

On the other hand Turkish people showed that their traditions of democracy are stronger than the West gives credit for by preventing the opposition becoming an ineffectual political dummy that exists only to give legitimacy to the ruling party.