The mayor of a western Turkish provincial capital who was elected from Turkey’s main opposition party in 2024 formally joined President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party on Tuesday, in the latest defection weakening opposition control of municipalities won in local elections two years ago.
President Erdoğan pinned the badge of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Afyonkarahisar Mayor Burcu Köksal at an expanded provincial chairs meeting at party headquarters in Ankara.
Erdoğan also pinned an AKP badge on Veysel Topçu, mayor of Dinar, a district in Afyonkarahisar province, at the same ceremony.
Köksal was elected mayor of Afyonkarahisar in March 2024 from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in a vote that ended 20 years of AKP rule in the city.
Afyonkarahisar, a conservative province in western Anatolia, had been one of the symbolic gains for the CHP in the March 31, 2024, local elections, when the party won a nationwide plurality for the first time in decades and took control of many large cities and provincial municipalities.
The mayor had said through journalist Barış Yarkadaş on TV100 that she would join the AKP and that there was “no threat or pressure” behind her decision.
Köksal also said there was no criminal investigation into her husband, denying opposition claims that mayors have been pushed toward the ruling party through legal pressure.
Hours before her formal entry into the AKP, Halk TV columnist İsmail Saymaz said, citing sources familiar with the matter, that prosecutors had decided to detain Köksal’s husband, Yasin Köksal, on February 19 as part of a corruption and bribery investigation but that they did not act on the decision.
Saymaz said the case involved claims of 700 million Turkish lira in bribes and corruption and that he had heard the investigation included technical surveillance.
“Although Burcu Köksal says there is no investigation involving my husband, as far as I know, there is,” Saymaz said.
Saymaz said the alleged detention decision also targeted an executive of a municipal affiliate and a deputy municipal director.
He asked whether there was any connection between Köksal’s decision to join the AKP and the earlier decision not to detain her husband.
Yasin Köksal denied the allegations against him last week, telling Yarkadaş that he was not under investigation, was not active in politics and did not work for the municipality.
Pro-government media had described Yasin Köksal as a “shadow mayor” in reports last year, alleging that he was running the municipality in practice and that bribes were collected from contractors and companies in return for zoning favors.
Köksal arrived at AKP headquarters before Tuesday’s ceremony and said she was at peace with her decision.
“I am very peaceful, my conscience is clear,” Köksal was quoted as saying before the ceremony.
Erdoğan welcomed the two mayors to the AKP during his speech and accused the CHP leadership of “dirty politics.”
The move followed a decision by the CHP’s central executive board to refer Köksal to the party’s disciplinary committee with a request for expulsion.
Köksal had long had strained relations with the CHP leadership after saying during the 2024 campaign that the doors of Afyonkarahisar Municipality would be open to all parties except the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), prompting criticism from CHP leader Özgür Özel and İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Her defection gives the AKP control of another municipality that voters had handed to the opposition in 2024.
Köksal was not only a local mayor but also a former CHP lawmaker who had served as one of the party’s deputy parliamentary group leaders before running for mayor.
Köksal became the first woman elected mayor of Afyonkarahisar in 2024.
Her move comes amid a series of defections by mayors elected from the CHP or other opposition parties after the 2024 local elections.
At least 14 mayors elected from the CHP had joined the AKP before Köksal’s formal move, including Aydın Metropolitan Mayor Özlem Çerçioğlu, one of the most prominent local government figures in western Turkey, along with district and town mayors from Aydın, Gaziantep, Yalova, Konya, Ardahan, Antalya, Şırnak, Çorum and Niğde.
The defections have unfolded along with a crackdown on CHP-run municipalities that began in October 2024 and intensified after the March 2025 jailing of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s main political rival, with recent Turkish media tallies saying 23 CHP mayors have been jailed at some point since the 2024 local elections, 20 remain in jail and 25 have been removed from office.