“This is not an April Fools’ joke. CHP (Republican People’s Party) has become the first party!” read the headline of Sözcü, a newspaper known for its criticism of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after the local elections.
Turkey’s main opposition, CHP, has run against Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 18 elections, and has lost 17. As the results were announced, the country couldn’t believe what was happening.
Erdoğan is famous for giving balcony speeches on election night, and for half of the country, that is the most unbearable part of an election day. However, this time, millions watched with huge grins on their faces, especially eager to hear him say, “Unfortunately, we could not get the result we wanted from the local elections.”
Since this was the first election since the traumatic 2023 presidential elections, opposition voters went to the polls without much hope. Nobody expected this result, and certainly nobody could have predicted the opposition’s victory. The last time CHP won was in 1977. CHP has consistently won around 25% of the votes since AKP took power. This time, the CHP’s leader, Özgür Özel, announced that his party had “broken the 25% ceiling”.
What was even more shocking was that a social democratic party was able to win in conservative strongholds in rural provinces, sometimes with young secular women standing as mayoral candidates.
Istanbul’s Bağdat Avenue is where Turkey celebrates, and this time, millions poured on to the avenue with Turkish flags. Cars honked, and loud music played. I was also there, soaking up Ekrem İmamoğlu’s election as city mayor.
Since 2019, İmamoğlu has been seen as someone who can challenge Erdoğan and the rival Erdoğan fears the most.
For decades, Erdoğan pitted the rural, traditionalist, conservative, and economically disadvantaged segments of Turkish society against the urban, cosmopolitan, educated, secular, and wealthier segments. But it seems as if his religious voters stayed away – some of them even switched to CHP.
I talked to an AKP voter from my neighbourhood who told me he was voting for CHP. I laughed – I didn’t believe him, but he insisted, “I am serious! These secularists act more humble compared with the money-hungry AKP!”
Erdoğan liked to portray his opponents as “the elite”, but this trick doesn’t work on İmamoğlu. He has a slight Black Sea accent, which is the same region Erdoğan himself is from. İmamoğlu also comes from a centre-right and somewhat conservative family.
Erdoğan has always said “whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey”, and as the former mayor of the city, he sees his own success story repeated in İmamoğlu. But it is important to understand one particular part of Erdoğan’s story to understand why he is so worried about his successor.
Back in 1998, Erdoğan was sentenced to a 10-month prison term for reciting a poem deemed to incite religious hatred. This incident began to shape a strong narrative around him. He came to represent the fight against oppressive forces in Turkey. Three years after his release, he went on to win a majority.
However, in December 2022, Erdoğan made a crucial mistake; he handed a jail sentence to İmamoğlu. In Turkish politics, people adore underdogs. They love seeing someone rise from the ashes – it is how Erdoğan came to power in the first place. This might be one of the rare instances in human history where sentencing someone to jail turned out to be a gift.
Turkey did not transform into a flourishing democracy; the opposition still faces extreme difficulty. Despite the shifts in the political landscape, Erdoğan remains firmly entrenched as the president, wielding total authority.
However, the recent local elections have dealt a huge blow to that aura of invincibility. Erdoğan is no longer the undisputed victor of Turkish politics.
Seeing how Ekrem İmamoğlu in Istanbul and also Mansur Yavaş of Ankara both won landslide victories against Erdoğan’s party, I can’t help but wonder how last year’s presidential elections might have unfolded, had the opposition put up a different candidate.
Celal Budak is a freelance writer living in Istanbul
