On March 19, Ekrem Imamoglu—the mayor of Istanbul and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main rival—was detained by police in a dawn raid; he was later formally charged with corruption and suspended from his post as mayor. Imamoglu, a real estate developer-turned-politician, denies the charges.
On the day that he was transferred to prison, the roughly 1.5 million members of the main opposition party, the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), endorsed Imamoglu as the party’s presidential candidate in the election that is scheduled for 2028, while more than 13 million additional sympathizers who are not CHP members cast votes in separate ballot boxes to show solidarity with the imprisoned politician.
Imamoglu’s arrest has sparked the biggest demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade. In 2013, several million people took part in what came to be known as the Gezi Park protests, which were violently suppressed by the police. The current protests are not on the same scale so far, but tens of thousands, many of whom are university students, have defied the ban on demonstrations.
While the 2013 protests pitted diverse civil society groups against Erdogan, the latest demonstrations are a confrontation between the CHP and the president, who has called on the opposition party to “stop playing with the nation’s nerves.” Yet, notwithstanding the outpouring of public support, Imamoglu has—to all intents and purposes—been removed from the presidential equation.
It’s unlikely that he will be acquitted and allowed to contest any future election—whether for president or mayor—again as long as the present regime endures. On March 18, Istanbul University revoked Imamoglu’s degree, effectively disqualifying him from entering the presidential race, since candidates are required to be university graduates. In Turkey, university rectors have been appointed by the president since 2016, and the revocation is clearly part of the government’s plan.
But the government doesn’t—at least, not for the moment—contest the CHP’s control of Istanbul. Imamoglu will be replaced as mayor, not by the governor of Istanbul, but by another elected representative of the CHP, who will be selected today by the City Council, where the party holds the majority.
The CHP is ascendant, and if present trends persist, the center-left party will succeed in “overthrowing the government,” as party leader Ozgur Ozel vowed in a speech after Imamoglu was detained. In local elections held in March 2024, the CHP became the leading party of Turkey for the first time in 47 years, winning 35 out of 81 provinces with 37.8 percent of the votes and making significant inroads into the country’s traditionally conservative heartland.
In the same election, the ruling, conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP), which received 35.5 percent of the votes, lost its leading position for the first time in 22 years.
The CHP has capitalized on widespread popular discontent with the AKP’s neoliberal economic policies, which critics say have impoverished the lower classes and hurt the middle class. Under Ozel, who unseated former party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in 2023 after the latter’s failed presidential bid that year, the CHP has successfully combined a social democratic message of economic redistribution with an inclusive stance toward the two constituencies—Kurds and religious conservatives—that have traditionally shunned the CHP, which was founded by the nationalist-secularist Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s first president.
However, an emerging reconciliation between Erdogan’s government and the Kurdish political movement has put the CHP in an awkward position, as the rapprochement could help Erdogan recover some Kurdish support. On Feb. 27, Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), called for the dissolution of the militant group.
The call followed an appeal from Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a key ally of Erdogan, to Ocalan to renounce violence and disband the PKK. Selahattin Demirtas, a imprisoned former pro-Kurdish party leader, praised Erdogan, Bahceli, and Ocalan as leaders “who have taken the initiative for Kurdish-Turkish peace.”
Ozel, on the other hand, claimed that Ocalan’s statement had been prepared by the state, intimating that the PKK leader is a stooge of Erdogan. The CHP’s lukewarm, if not outright negative, response to Ocalan’s call has not gone down well among Kurdish voters.
Nonetheless, the CHP is well positioned to carry the next presidential election, whoever its candidate is. While the arrest of Imamoglu shows that the regime doesn’t worry anymore about preserving even a veneer of democracy for the sake of its legitimacy, the decision to leave the CHP in control of Istanbul is suggestive of caution, and Erdogan is unlikely to ban the party outright.
The right-wing nationalist state edifice that has been put in place by Erdogan and Bahceli during the past decade now faces an existential challenge.
Erdogan, who has turned 71 and aged considerably, is no longer a long-term solution. Yet the regime has not made any attempt so far to launch the candidacy of any promising successor.
For a while, Selcuk Bayraktar—Erdogan’s son-in-law—appeared to be a candidate for embodying the societal hope of renewal, especially among the younger generations, and he still is a possibility. But he has kept a low profile during the past year, carefully avoiding public attention. This may be because Erdogan’s preferred choice, according to speculation, is his son Bilal Erdogan.
In the absence of an obvious AKP crown prince, it’s instead Imamoglu who has become the object of societal aspirations, striking fear into a deeply illiberal state establishment. The deposed and imprisoned Istanbul mayor is anything but ideologically palatable for the Turkish state. He has cut a threateningly anti-nationalist profile, courting European representatives—in particular, a dinner with the British ambassador in 2022 prompted criticism—and unconditionally defending the rights of the Kurds.
The CHP’s ascendancy, combined with the absence of elite consensus about Erdogan’s succession plan, makes it imperative for the regime to engineer the selection of a palatable CHP candidate as an insurance policy to ensure its ongoing influence.
Imamoglu’s removal paves the way for his main rival within the CHP—Mansur Yavas, the mayor of Ankara, whose popularity in fact eclipses Imamoglu’s. A former member of the MHP and still a strident nationalist, Yavas would likely be an acceptable alternative for the state.
Yavas, who does not hide his presidential ambitions and leads in polls, argued that overall national opinion should be taken into consideration when selecting the CHP’s presidential candidate. He also opposed the March 23 primary for which Imamoglu pushed.
While Yavas was unsuccessful in blunting his rival’s bid, Imamoglu’s arrest—on the day of the primary—resurrected his political prospects. Yavas was astute enough though to quickly express solidarity with Imamoglu and cast a vote for his rival in the primary.
The rightist Yavas was recruited to the CHP in 2013 by then-leader Kilicdaroglu, who steered the party to the right. Commenting on Ocalan’s call for the PKK to dissolve, Yavas exhibited little appreciation for the need for national reconciliation, saying in an address to military families that PKK militants who lay down their arms as part of the peace deal will “surrender to the justice of Turkey” and that their fate be decided in consultations with the relatives of fallen Turkish soldiers.
In a speech on March 23, Yavas referred to Kurdish flags that were displayed at celebrations of the Kurdish New Year in eastern Turkey as “rags,” for which the CHP leader Ozel quickly apologized when he addressed the crowds outside the City hall in Istanbul. The joint endeavor of the AKP-MHP regime and Ocalan is a hard sell among nationalists, and Yavas seems to be betting that attracting disgruntled Turkish supremacists from the right-wing parties would more than compensate for any loss of support from the CHP’s left wing.
While the CHP has now closed ranks around Imamoglu, it will eventually have to come to terms with the necessity of choosing his replacement. Whether or not the right-wing nationalist regime will be perpetuated beyond Erdogan—and the deeper objectives of the operation against Imamoglu attained—will depend on the choices that Turkey’s two lefts, the Turkish social democrats and the left-wing Kurdish political movement, decide to make.
The CHP must not settle for Yavas. The obvious choice for the officially social democratic CHP is Ozel, whose strategy of steering the party back to the left (Ozel has also been elected vice president of the Socialist International) has already been rewarded.
Ozel’s role model is Bulent Ecevit, a populist who led the CHP between 1972 and 1980 and turned it into a leftist party, scoring its best electoral result to date in the general election in 1977. Ozel has praised Ecevit, pointing out that there are important lessons to draw from the 1970s, when the CHP assumed its social democratic position, embraced labor unions, and became a voice for the oppressed. The latter, crucially, includes the Kurds. Ozel—like Imamoglu—has been unambiguous in his endorsement of the Kurds’ aspirations for recognition and equality.
The pro-Kurdish and left-wing Peoples’ Democracy and Equality (DEM) Party has, in turn, stood by the CHP, condemning the arrest of Imamoglu as an assault on democracy. However, a progressive alliance of the CHP and the DEM Party remains elusive.
The DEM Party is encouraged by MHP leader Bahceli’s commitment to the peace process and is cautiously optimistic that its aspirations—notably enshrining Kurdish cultural and language rights in the constitution— are eventually going to be accommodated, in return for which the pro-Kurdish party may decide to assist Erdogan’s reelection. That would require amending the Turkish Constitution—which does not allow for a third presidential term—or calling a snap election.
The AKP-MHP coalition lacks the necessary parliamentary majority for both alternatives, making a grand bargain with the DEM Party its likely objective.
But the arrest of Imamoglu has made it clear that Erdogan’s regime will never be a partner for those who seek societal reconciliation. Rather than unwittingly enable his further consolidation of power, Turkish social democrats and left-wing Kurds need to outwit the state.
Turkey can only achieve democratic change if its two lefts unite.
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