It has been less than a year since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won Turkey’s presidential election and secured a third term in office, which will last until 2028. Turkey’s constitution (which was most recently amended at Erdogan’s initiative in 2017) states that no person can hold the presidency beyond two terms, a legal inconvenience that Erdogan managed to conveniently sidestep in 2023.
But the key for a continuation of Erdogan’s political career may lie in the local elections scheduled across Turkey for March 31. If Erdogan prevails, he may pursue yet another constitutional reform—and a new commitment to cooperating on policy with far-right political partners.
Erdogan is now actively campaigning on behalf of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) and promoting its mayoral candidates to win in the country’s big cities, many of which the AKP lost in 2019—primarily, Istanbul and Ankara. This is not a vanity project for Erdogan. Dominating the realm of local and provincial government would also allow him to regain control over a vast spoils system rooted in the local level. The foundation of Erdogan’s popularity has long been the AKP’s ability to grant construction permits, control zoning, and provide urban welfare services to partisan supporters.
The local elections are critical for Erdogan because they could afford him the chance to pursue a new constitution, which could do away with presidential term limits and the remaining elements of judicial independence. Erdogan has recently reiterated that this would be his final term in office, and that he would not seek re-election as president in 2028. But Turkey’s last constitutional referendum shows that Erdogan could use an electoral victory to seek constitutional changes that benefit him personally. A victory at the local level could easily be exploited as a political mandate of this sort.
In other words, the upcoming election cycle presents the opportunity for Erdogan to consolidate power at both the national and local level—and to cement his dominance over the entire Turkish political system for years to come. What are the chances he will succeed?
In a normal world, they would be slim to none. Erdogan has run the country’s economy into the ground, destroying its middle class. To put this into perspective, in February 2017, Turkey’s currency stood at $1 being equivalent to approximately 3.6 Turkish lira. Today, $1 is worth 31 Turkish lira, ensuring that Turks’ ability to travel abroad and general purchasing power have declined beyond comprehension.
Actual consumer inflation hovers close to 120 percent annually, according to the independent group ENAG, and most of the salaried labor force appears to dependent upon the minimum wage (about $530 each month). Rental prices in the housing market have spiraled out of control. Turkey has still not recovered from the devastating effects of last year’s earthquake, which killed more than 50,000 people and devastated 11 of the country’s 81 provinces.
Daily life in Turkey is unbearable for the vast majority of its citizens. If the AKP manages to win back big cities such as Istanbul and Ankara, which have been run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) since 2019, it will not be due to the AKP’s mayoral candidates convincing voters that their party can provide better economic governance. If this were the case, then they would not have lost major cities to the CHP five years ago.
If the AKP wins, it will be mainly due to two factors: the incompetence of the opposition parties and the Erdogan factor.
Much like the presidential election of 2023, if the political opposition was trying to let the AKP and Erdogan win, its present electoral “strategy” is precisely how it would go about it. Unlike the 2019 and 2023 elections, the opposition Nation Alliance coalition is defunct. This means that the ability of voters to coalesce around one mayoral candidate that is supported by the main opposition parties has dissipated.
Nowhere is this more critical than in Istanbul and Ankara—the two big prizes for Erdogan. Istanbul’s CHP mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu—who won the race twice in 2019 despite Erdogan’s attempts to deny him victory through a forced election rerun—was only victorious because he was backed by all the parties in the Nation Alliance as well as the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). As it stands, the alliance no longer supports Imamoglu’s candidacy, and other groups, such as the HDP and Meral Aksener’s Good Party are running their own candidates. The same risk exists for Ankara’s CHP mayor, Mansur Yavas. Without the opposition unifying behind mayoral candidates, Erdogan has the opportunity to exploit the divisions within the opposition camp.
The opposition’s failure to sustain its anti-Erdogan alliance can be attributed to petty turf battles and personal grievances. Put simply, each political party would like its own mayor or to be offered municipal governance opportunities in return for supporting a particular candidate, such as Imamoglu.
And the squabbles for mayoral nomination are not just happening between rival parties. The CHP is beset with internal conflict, with multiple personalities desperately vying to secure a candidacy, as displayed by party elites fighting to secure the mayoral candidacy for the province of Hatay. It is clear once again that the opposition’s main priority is not focused on containing Erdogan’s reach for power—it’s about winning office at the local level.
This is where the Erdogan factor comes into play. At face value, the candidates fielded by the AKP for places like Istanbul and Ankara are relatively unknown individuals, who clearly have little charisma. For example, Murat Kurum, the AKP’s challenger to Imamoglu, should not stand a chance of winning. As a former environment minister, Kurum appears to lack political acumen, campaigning skills, and name recognition. This may not ultimately matter, as Kurum’s campaign is augmented by Erdogan’s support. Erdogan is taking center stage in numerous provincial races and promoting the AKP’s candidates.
Yes, the economic record of the AKP and Erdogan has voters feeling disgruntled, but one has to remember that Erdogan is not talking about the state of economy when campaigning on behalf of AKP candidates. He speaks to voters in a media environment that heavily shields Erdogan and the AKP’s disastrous management of the country.
Instead, Erdogan uses the bully pulpit to showcase his government’s achievements, such as the progress that the defense sector has made. This was clearly displayed with the recent timing of a Turkish astronaut going up to the International Space Station for the first time and Turkey’s first domestically produced fighter jet taking its maiden flight.
None of these initiatives detract from the realities of economic hardship faced by the public, but they do show that Erdogan (and by extension, his handpicked mayoral candidates) appears more interested in governance issues than a disunited opposition that is only squabbling for petty local office. If Erdogan can succeed in selling this message, the AKP will succeed in gaining a plurality of votes, which is all that he needs to do.
What Erdogan lacks in economic performance to woo voters, he makes up for in unity of purpose and unity of support. Backing his party’s local election bids are members of his so-called People’s Alliance. This represents a cornucopia of unsavory right-wing parties who have chosen to join Erdogan’s bandwagon. In return for their loyalty, Erdogan will reward them through a mixture of passing their legislative priorities or supporting them in municipalities not competed for by the AKP.
In the event that Erdogan chooses to pursue the promulgation of a new constitution following the March 31 elections, it would be fair to assume that parties in his alliance will want a strong voice to pursue long-desired goals, such as limiting the scope, definition, and implementation of secularism. Once again, Erdogan appears to be laser-focused on winning another election cycle, while the opposition stands poised to hand it to him.
Turkey’s Western allies have already come to terms with the fact that Erdogan will rule the country until 2028. But they should now consider that after this month’s local elections, Turkey’s democracy may take another step toward becoming completely extinguished.
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