A survey has found that an alliance between Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), known as the Public Alliance, would lose votes in all of Turkey’s seven metropolitan cities in a general election, the Gazete Duvar news website reported on Monday.
“Which party would you vote for if a general election were to be held this Sunday?” the ORC polling company asked participants in İstanbul, Ankara, Mersin, Samsun, Gaziantep, Aydın and Malatya between Sept. 13 and 29, 2021.
According to the survey’s results, electoral support for the Public Alliance has declined compared to the results of the June 24, 2018 elections.
The opposition bloc, the Nation Alliance, consisting of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Good (İYİ) Party, on the other hand, has been attracting voters from across the country.
In İstanbul, the AKP and the MHP secured, respectively, 39.5 percent and 7.7 percent of the vote with a 3-point and 2-point decrease, respectively, compared to 2018, while the CHP and İYİ managed to garner 28.5 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively, both boosting their votes.
Likewise, in Ankara, the AKP and the MHP secured, respectively, 34.9 percent and 9.7 percent of the vote with a 6-point and 3-point decrease, respectively, compared to 2018, while the CHP and İYİ managed to get 29.5 percent and 14.8 percent, respectively, increasing their votes.
The same pattern was observed also in Mersin, Aydın, Samsun, Malatya and Gaziantep. The sharpest decline in the AKP’s votes was in Samsun, where the ruling party saw an 8.7-point decline. Its ally the MHP lost the highest number of votes in Malatya, where its electoral support declined by some 6 points.
Samsun was the city where the CHP managed to increase its votes the most, from 17.3 percent in 2018 to 22.7 percent, while İYİ was the best performer in Aydın where its votes rose from 14.8 percent to 23.5 percent.
In the last general election, held in June 2018, the AKP garnered a nationwide vote of 42.6 percent. However, public surveys have increasingly been showing the party’s public support to be slipping.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose ruling AKP has been in power as a single party government since 2002, was elected president in 2014 and reelected in 2018. His election in 2018 was under a presidential system as Turkey switched from a parliamentary to a presidential system of governance with a public referendum in 2017. Under the presidential system, Erdoğan is accused of establishing one-man rule, destroying the separation of powers and silencing dissent.
The AKP government launched a massive crackdown on non-loyalist citizens following a failed coup in July 2016 as thousands of people were jailed on trumped-up terrorism or coup charges.