Under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the central executive committee of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) met yesterday Tuesday to assess the causes of its heavy defeat in Sunday’s municipal elections.
Addressing its members, the president of Turkey listed the reasons for the defeat, according to him. In disgust of his speech, he admitted that “there was not only a loss of votes, but also a loss of blood and soul.”
He spoke of a “disease of arrogance” in party officials, admitted that rising living costs and inflation were causing discontent, that the government had failed to ease pensioner protests over their meager incomes, and that even on the Gaza Strip issue persuaded and attacked.
“We cannot and will not allow anyone, whoever they are, to waste and squander 22 years of experience, 22 years of hard struggle” was the conclusion of President Erdogan at the meeting in a heavy atmosphere.
After his speech, the Turkish president visited a cafe in Ankara, where he talked with citizens.
In his speech to the central executive committee of the AKP, the president referred to the picture formed after the elections: he recalled that the percentage of the AKP decreased from 44.3% to 35.5% and the percentage of the People’s Alliance from 51.6% to 40.5%.
He attributed the loss of votes mainly to the fact that voters who voted for the AKP in the presidential and parliamentary elections 10 months ago did not go to the polls this time. As he pointed out, the participation rate in the 2024 elections fell by 6 percentage points compared to the 2019 elections and argued that the great majority of the decrease corresponds to AKP voters.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the abstention on both local organizations and the party’s central leadership, as well as on the candidates, stressing that these issues, including the candidate selection process, must be thoroughly discussed and that necessary measures will be taken.
Enumerating factors that caused voter discontent, President Erdogan cited the rising cost of living and inflationary pressure, which started with the pandemic and escalated further with the Russia-Ukraine war, as the first cause.
He said pensioners were the social class that suffered the biggest loss of welfare due to high inflation. “We were already seeing the complaints of our pensioners during our visits to the district. We have tried to alleviate this pressure with a one-off payment of £5,000, pension increases of up to 50% and other measures, without disrupting the execution of the budget, but we have not succeeded,” he admitted.
Referring to the government’s stance on the Israel/Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and the pre-election complaints heard by the opposition, as well as Islamist circles that are a pool of AKP voters, that despite Erdogan’s harsh rhetoric, Turkey continues and increases trade with Israel, the Turkish president said: “Unfortunately, even in an issue like the Gaza crisis, where we did our best and paid a price for it, we failed to fend off political attacks and convince certain circles. We will definitely make our evaluation in these matters with pros and cons.”
The president warned the AKP executives against the “disease of arrogance”, as he characteristically said. “Starting from here, we face a problem that extends to the provincial, regional and municipal organizations, the mayors, the parliamentarians and even the (public) administration” he said to add: “The biggest enemy of a party that is born from the the bowels of the people is to build walls between themselves and the citizens. We will show our nation that no one in this party deserves to be ignored, regardless of their position.”
He also underlined the need to investigate why the people who gave power in 2002 to the AKP, just 15 months after the founding of the party, declared it the clear winner of the elections just 10 months ago and always stood by its side in all the elections in in which it has participated to date – 17 contests in 22 years – “pushed” it on March 31 behind the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Source: RES-MPE
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