All eyes on İstanbul after local elections in Turkey

Turkey awaited results from municipal elections on Sunday, with all eyes on Istanbul, the national “jewel” that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is trying to take away from the opposition.

The first estimates were expected to be released late on Sunday after the last polling stations closed at 1400 GMT in the west of the country.

The election took place against the backdrop of high inflation and a loss in the value of the lira, with the uncertainty weighing on many voters.

“Everyone is worried about the day-to-day” 43-year-old Güler Kaya said at an Istanbul polling station.

“The crisis is swallowing up the middle class, we have had to change all our habits,” she said. “If Erdoğan wins, it will get even worse.”

“When Turkish people vote, the situation in the kitchen or on their [dinner table] changes the voting trend,” Ali Faik Demir, a political scientist at Galatasaray University, told AFP.

Vote change happens “when we can’t make a living, when we can’t eat,” he said.

Erdoğan may not have been a candidate in the municipal vote, but he dominated the campaign.

His road to power in Turkey began in Istanbul when he was elected mayor of the large city straddling Europe and Asia in 1994.

His allies held the city until five years ago, when Ekrem İmamoğlu of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) wrested control of the nation’s economic powerhouse.

If İmamoğlu retains his seat, he will likely be the main opponent to Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the next presidential election in 2028.

But if Erdoğan wins back İstanbul and Ankara, he will have an incentive to “amend” the constitution to stand for re-election for a fourth term, warned Bayram Balcı, a political scientist at Sciences Po university in France.

As soon as Erdoğan clinched re-election as president last May — a post he has held since 2014 — he launched the battle to reclaim the city of 16 million people.

“İstanbul is the jewel, the treasure and the apple of our country’s eye,” the 70-year-old leader said at a recent rally in the city.

More than a mayor’s race

Erdoğan named former environment minister Murat Kurum as his mayoral candidate for İstanbul, painting İmamoğlu as a “part-time mayor.”

“This election will mark the beginning of a new era for our country,” Erdoğan said after casting his vote in İstanbul at midday on Sunday.

“Whoever wins İstanbul, wins Turkey,” Erman Bakırcı, a pollster from Konda Research and Consultancy, recalled Erdoğan once saying.

In the run-up to the election, İmamoğlu has defended his record and has focused on local issues. “Every vote you give to the CHP will mean more metros, creches, green spaces, social benefits and investment,” he said.

‘Emotional day’

After casting his vote with his family in İstanbul around midday Sunday, İmamoğlu emerged to applause and chants of “Everything will be fine,” his 2019 election slogan.

“Today is an emotional day for me,” İmamoğlu said in the garden of a school polling station.

The election is being held with inflation at a whopping 67 percent and with a massive loss in value of the lira, which slid from 19 to the dollar to 31 to the dollar in one year. Analysts say this could work in favor of the opposition.

Armed clashes were reported in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast, leaving one dead and 12 wounded, a local official told AFP.

The pro-Kurdish DEM Party said it had identified irregularities “in almost all the Kurdish provinces,” in particular through suspicious cases of proxy voting.

Observers from France were also refused access to a polling station in the region, according to the MLSA lawyers’ association.

Fractured opposition

Some 61 million voters were eligible to cast ballots to choose mayors across Turkey’s 81 provinces, as well as provincial council members and other local officials.

The opposition has been fractured ahead of the polls, in contrast with the local elections five years ago.

This time around the main opposition party, the social democrat CHP, has failed to rally support behind a single candidate.

Its candidates are narrowly favored in İstanbul, the capital Ankara and the Aegean port city of Izmir, though analysts have warned that opinion polls have not always been accurate.

And support for Erdoğan and the ruling party remains strong in much of the country.

In Ankara, retiree and voter Meliha Sönmez warned, “If Erdoğan loses the election, he will be weakened.”