Ekrem İmamoğlu’s third convincing victory in the İstanbul election looks set to propel him into the running for the 2028 presidential vote.
The football-loving 52-year-old, who first became the mega-city’s mayor in 2019, on Sunday again defeated President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chosen candidate in the country’s economic powerhouse despite a concerted effort to unseat him by the long-serving president.
“Tomorrow is a new spring day for our country,” İmamoğlu told tens of thousands of supporters cheering his re-election late Sunday, wearing his trademark shirtsleeves and rimless glasses.
İmamoğlu, the candidate for the social-democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), had spent much of the campaign targeting Erdoğan rather than his nominal opponent, former environment minister Murat Kurum.
Largely unknown in 2019, İmamoğlu that year ended 25 years of rule by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its allies in the city of 16 million where the president was once mayor.
The smooth talking İmamoğlu was initially stripped of his victory when the vote was controversially annulled. But he won by an even bigger margin in a re-run three months later.
He has since become one of Turkey’s most popular politicians, even as he was targeted with legal action.
An İstanbul court in late 2022 sentenced İmamoğlu to more than two years in prison and barred him from politics for allegedly insulting members of Turkey’s Supreme Election Board (YSK).
İmamoğlu has appealed, meaning that he has continued to serve as mayor while putting his fate in the hands of judges whose impartially he questioned.
Turkey ‘doesn’t deserve poverty’
In Sunday’s election, İmamoğlu ran as the CHP candidate as he failed to get Turkey’s fractured opposition parties to rally around his bid.
The size of his victory will also have stunned those erstwhile allies.
A practicing Muslim leading a secular outfit, the former businessman can draw support from a wide spectrum of voters.
“He can attract all segments of the opposition electorate, whether it’s Turkish or Kurdish, Sunni or Alevi, young or old,” said Berk Esen, a political scientist at İstanbul’s Sabancı University.
İmamoğlu’s original 2019 win came in an anti-Erdoğan wave propelling the opposition into power in Turkey’s major cities — including the capital, Ankara.
A new generation of leaders from the staunchly secular CHP, including İmamoğlu in İstanbul and Mansur Yavaş in Ankara, offered a clear alternative to Erdoğan’s Islamic-rooted AKP.
Some voters rebelled against sweeping purges that followed a failed putsch in 2016. Others were disillusioned by an economic crisis that has still not let up.
With inflation now above 65 percent and the massive depreciation of the lira, İmamoğlu said in January that Erdoğan had “turned the rules of economics upside down.”
“This country doesn’t deserve poverty,” he added.
‘Atomic ant’
Now İmamoğlu is seen as the most likely potential candidate to beat whoever stands for Erdoğan’s party in the 2028 presidential election.
Some have accused him of thinking more of his own career than the job before him, which he denied by saying he works “like an atomic ant” in reference to a popular cartoon show.
İmamoğlu has never hidden his presidential ambitions but recently told opposition outlet Medyascope that “there are still four years until 2028. It would be unwarranted for me to talk about that today.”
As Erdoğan has shown, running İstanbul with its vast population, administration and budget can be a path to national power.
Since Erdoğan won a new term in last year’s presidential election, İmamoğlu has challenged the leadership of his CHP, calling for change after former leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was defeated.
“İmamoğlu is an effective political operator and at this point in time represents one of the very few glimmers of hope for constituents who oppose Erdoğan and the AKP,” Anthony Skinner, director of research at geopolitical advisory firm Marlow Global, told AFP.
The İstanbul mayor has crafted a media image and run viral social media campaigns that both raised his profile and got on the nerves of many voters.
State media, meanwhile, turned him into a hate figure.
In January 2022 pro-government media were awash with images taken by surveillance cameras of him having dinner with the British ambassador at a seafood restaurant.
As İstanbul battled a snowstorm, the images played into the government’s portrayal of the mayor as out-of-touch and Western-backed.
During the election, he had to contend with Erdoğan taking credit for many of the important projects that have modernized İstanbul in recent years.
© Agence France-Presse