Sixty-one million voters in Turkey are participating in Sunday’s municipal elections. They are called to the polls to elect their mayors, a vote that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced will be the last under his rule.
Here are five important parameters concerning the particular electoral contest in the neighborhood.
Multiple election contest
Residents of the country’s major cities will elect their mayor, but also their city councillors, their district mayors and their mukhtar, a kind of district head.
In Constantinoplewhere voters will have to choose between 49 candidates for the post of mayor, the ballot paper is 97 centimeters wide, according to the electoral commission.
The “trophy” Istanbul
Sixteen million inhabitants, 30% of the GDP and a springboard to power: Istanbul, which passed 2019 into the hands of the opposition in a bitter electoral contest in two acts, is “the biggest trophy of Turkish politics”, sums up the Burke Essena political scientist at Istanbul’s Sabancı University.
The main city of Turkey, which in 1923 lost the position of the capital in favor of Ankarais a huge political showcase, which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s, took advantage of to forge a national political destiny.
Against the outgoing mayor Ekrem Imamoglouthe Islamist ruling party AKP brings down a somewhat charismatic former minister, the Murat Kurumwhose possible defeat would not tarnish the image of the head of state.
Crucial elections for Erdogan
According to opinion polls, Istanbul and Ankara are expected to remain in the hands of the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main opposition formation that won the two cities five years ago.
THE Smyrnathe country’s third city and CHP stronghold, appears to remain out of AKP’s reach.
The ruling party may also retreat in large Anatolian cities in favor of an ultra-conservative formation (Geninden Refah), predict analysts, who pointed to lower attendance at rallies held in the presence of the head of state – possibly due to the Ramadan fast.
However, despite trailing in the polls ahead of the May 2023 presidential election, Erdogan was re-elected with 52.2% of the vote.
The last election for Erdogan?
In power since 2003, first as prime minister and then as president since 2014, Erdogan announced in early March that these municipal elections would be the “last elections” held under his rule, as the current constitution does not allow him to contest new term, unless early elections are held.
Observers are speculating about these remarks by the president, who celebrated his 70th birthday at the end of February: a sincere farewell or a maneuver aimed at persuading Turks to give his party one last blank check?
The vote of the Kurds
The votes of the Kurds, who account for about a fifth of Turkey’s estimated 85 million people, are even more sought after this year.
In Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM, formerly HDP), a third force in parliament, is expected to win numerous cities, despite expected inroads by Huda Par, a Kurdish party in far right.
Elsewhere in the country, a significant portion of Kurdish voters may favor the CHP to create a barrier to the AKP, according to polls.
Moreover, the recall of numerous pro-Kurdish mayors, who were elected in 2019 and replaced by government-appointed governors, risks preventing voters from participating in the polls, observers point out.
Source: APE – MEB
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