Ekrem İmamoğlu’s re-election has invigorated the opposition to Turkey’s president
Financial Times, April 8, 2024, by Adam Samson
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should fear for his political future if he does not abandon policies through which “the will of a single person” dominates the state, according to his most prominent political opponent.
Ekrem İmamoğlu’s re-election as Istanbul mayor last weekend sent a powerful jolt of enthusiasm through Turkey’s invigorated opposition and cemented the 52-year-old as Erdoğan’s chief adversary.
In an interview with the Financial Times, İmamoğlu warned Erdoğan would “shorten his political life” if he “does not get the message and continues to do the same things”. “Everything’s in his hands,” he added. İmamoğlu said the local elections, in which Erdoğan’s political party lost ground up and down the country, marked a clear indication that voters had rejected the president’s tightening grip on Turkish state institutions.
Local and international analysts have expressed concern over an erosion of the rule of law and the independence of Turkey’s judiciary as Erdoğan enters his third decade leading the country of 85mn people.
“It has evolved into a regime, a system where even the director of an institution in Istanbul cannot use his existing authority without a political instruction,” İmamoğlu said. “It gives us a state structure that reflects the will of a single person.” İmamoğlu added that “we can call it an authoritarian regime in quotation marks. But I think this election has ultimately condemned and rejected this whole method, this whole practice.”
Voters in last Sunday’s local election handed Erdoğan’s ruling party its biggest election defeat since it was founded more than two decades ago, as İmamoğlu’s Republican People’s party clinched mayoral races in Turkey’s biggest cities including the capital Ankara, where incumbent CHP mayor Mansur Yavaş won in a landslide.
Erdoğan campaigned heavily for his Justice and Development party’s (AKP) candidates, with the Istanbul race seen as pivotal since the president made winning back control of Turkey’s biggest city a priority since his re-election in last year’s general election.
State-aligned media showered Erdoğan’s candidate Murat Kurum with coverage, while the president dispatched top ministers to appeal directly to Istanbul residents. “This was never just the Istanbul election,” said İmamoğlu, who first took control of Istanbul from the AKP in 2019. “It turned into an election in which the president [declared himself] as an interlocutor.”
Erdoğan has signalled that these elections will be his last because his term limit runs out before the 2028 presidential election. But many analysts still expect him to run again if there is a change to the constitution or early elections are called.
İmamoğlu will begin his second term as Istanbul mayor with two big legal cases hanging over his head. He was sentenced to jail and received a political ban in 2022 for allegedly insulting a public official, a conviction that drew a rebuke from the US.
While that case is lodged in the appeals process, a separate criminal corruption case that his lawyer has described as “baseless” is set to resume in about a week. Asked whether he was concerned about these legal manoeuvres, İmamoğlu replied: “The person who will be afraid may be Erdoğan.”