Last May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey narrowly secured another term as head of state, crushing the morale of the political opposition and raising fears among his critics that staying in government would allow him to push Turkey further towards autocracy.
This weekend, the opposition fought back.
Mr. Erdogan’s opponents secured an unexpected string of victories in local elections across Turkey on Sunday, increasing the share of the country’s cities under their control and further encroaching on most of the major metropolises.
These opposition victories could serve as a check on Mr. Erdogan’s power at home, analysts said, while allowing rising opposition stars to use big city budgets to build their profiles ahead of the next elections. presidential elections, expected in 2028.
The results were a blow to Mr Erdogan, 70, who has been Turkey’s dominant politician for more than two decades. He has used his power as prime minister and then president to expand the role of Islam in public life and build Turkey’s status as an economic and military player, sometimes in ways that anger the United States and Turkey’s other allies in the NATO.
Mr Erdogan’s critics accuse him of pushing the country towards one-man rule, misleading the media and co-opting government institutions to serve his party’s interests. His defenders deny he is a would-be emperor, pointing to his long history of success in elections widely seen as free.
But the performance of Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party on Sunday showed many voters were unhappy, analysts said, particularly with Mr Erdogan’s handling of the economy. A multi-year cost-of-living crisis has weakened the national currency and high inflation has eaten away at the value of Turks’ wages and savings accounts.
For years, Mr. Erdogan has insisted on cutting interest rates to spur growth, even as inflation soared above 80 percent at the end of 2022.
“A lot of government voters were disappointed that they continued to vote for Erdogan but didn’t experience any kind of real improvement in their living standards,” said Berk Essen, an associate professor of political science at Sabancı University in Istanbul.
This apparently caused some supporters of Mr Erdogan’s party to stay home, contributing to opposition victories which Professor Essen described as “really amazing”.
Turnout was 78 percent, up from 87 percent during presidential and parliamentary elections last May, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
And yet Turkey’s largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, has increased the number of cities it runs to 35, up from 21, for a total of 81. The party’s mayors now control six of the country’s 10 largest cities, including top five: Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Antalya.
According to preliminary results, Mr Erdogan’s party took a major city from the opposition, Hatay, which was badly damaged by powerful earthquakes in February 2023 that killed more than 53,000 people.
The official results are expected from the Supreme Electoral Council in the coming days.
Addressing a crowd gathered outside his party’s headquarters in Ankara early Monday, Mr Erdogan acknowledged the losses, calling them a “turning point” that required reflection.
“The polls are closed, the nation has had its last say, it has made its decision,” he said. “We will look into the reasons for this setback.”
In the run-up to last year’s presidential election, Mr Erdogan repeatedly used the Finance Ministry to insulate low-income voters from economic hardship, spending lavishly on social assistance and repeatedly raising the minimum wage. But after winning the election, he reversed course and appointed an economic team that he authorized to raise interest rates to try to fix the economy.
Inflation, however, remained high, reaching 67% in February, according to the government. Some outside economists say the real rate is even higher.
The economic squeeze meant that ahead of this weekend’s election, Mr Erdogan had “run out of ammunition” and could no longer rely on the public purse to protect voters’ wallets, said Selva Demiralp, an economics professor at Koc University. to Constantinople.
“The opposition’s victory is a belated response to the economic crisis,” he said.
Despite his party’s losses, Mr Erdogan will likely stick to more orthodox economic policies, hoping they will pay off in the long run, he said.
Mr Erdogan’s re-election last year, despite Turkey’s economic problems and accusations that his government failed to respond quickly after the February 2023 earthquakes, hurt the mood of his opponents. A six-party coalition assembled to try to unseat him collapsed, and a young challenger ousted the failed opposition presidential candidate as leader of the largest opposition party.
But Sunday’s victories will likely reinvigorate opposition voters and secure their leaders’ policymaking platforms.
In the capital, Ankara, Mansur Yavas, the opposition incumbent mayor, defeated a challenger from Mr. Erdogan’s party with 28.7 percentage points.
In Istanbul, Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu defended his seat from a challenger that Mr Erdogan and many ministers in his government had campaigned for, winning by 11.5 percentage points.
The loss in Istanbul was a particularly hard blow for Mr. Erdogan, given its huge budget, the large number of jobs its city hall controls and Mr. Erdogan’s personal ties to the city. Not only did he grow up there, but he propelled his own political career forward by winning a landslide election to become the city’s mayor in 1994.
The victory for Mr Imamoglu, 52, was his third against candidates backed by Mr Erdogan, leading many Turks to see him as a possible presidential contender.
“Those who do not understand the nation’s message will ultimately lose,” Mr Imamoglu told supporters outside Istanbul’s city hall early on Monday.
His campaign focused on economic concerns and positive messages in a way that resonated with voters, said Tugce Ercetin, assistant professor of political science at Bilgi University in Istanbul.
“Voters punish the actors they hold responsible for the economy,” he said.
When the next election will be held is an open question.
Mr Erdogan is in the second of two constitutionally-allowed presidential terms, mandated until 2028. Weeks before Sunday’s vote, he said it would be the “last election”.
But some Turks believe he may seek a legal way to stay in power, either by pushing parliament to call early elections, which would allow him to run again, or by amending the constitution to allow another term.
Given the strong opposition presence on Sunday, its leaders could also decide to push for early elections in the hope they can use the ballot box to unseat Mr Erdogan while he is seen as vulnerable.
Shafak Timur contributed to the report.
