4 reasons why Turkey local poll loss is big blow for Erdogan

In Sunday’s municipal elections, which served as a crucial litmus test for Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party, the opposition recovered from last year’s defeat in the presidential election, while support for Erdogan’s conservative Islamic AKP fell to an all-time low.

Here are some key points to know about the result:

CHP locks down big cities

Candidates from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) buttressed their control of Turkey’s largest city Istanbul and the capital Ankara with higher vote shares than five years ago.

In 2019, CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu claimed the mayor’s seat in Istanbul even after the vote had to be re-run – but was faced with a municipal assembly dominated by AKP and its right-wing allies.

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On Sunday, the centre-left wrested control of 26 out of 39 Istanbul districts, up from 14 five years ago, and notably including Erdogan’s home turf in conservative Uskudar.

Opposition pushes inland

In the past, pro-government media was able to mock the CHP as the “party of beaches and villas with swimming pools”, as its support was strongest on Turkey’s prosperous western shores on the Aegean and the Mediterranean.

But its push Sunday inland into Anatolia could help shake off that elitist reputation, as it took power in places like northwestern industrial city Bursa and Adiyaman, the southeastern city struck by a devastating earthquake in February 2023.

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“Despite skewed rules to the game, (AKP) candidates lost even in conservative strongholds,” said Berk Esen, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Sabanci University.

In AKP bastions that held firm, such as Trabzon and Rize on the northeastern Black Sea coast, important districts came under opposition control.

Erdogan outflanked to the right

Erdogan’s AKP faced stiff competition from the Islam-based Yeniden Refah (New Welfare) Party, which received 6.2 percent of the vote to claim third place nationwide, according to near-final results.

New Welfare was founded in 2018 by the son of legendary Islamist leader Necmettin Erbakan, a mentor who inspired Erdogan with his “Nationalist View” ideology merging Turkish nationalist and Islamic identities.

New Welfare toppled AKP from its strongholds of Sanliurfa in the southeast and Yozgat in central Anatolia and split the right-wing vote in Istanbul’s Uskudar, helping CHP over the line.

Its leader Fatih Erbakan has attacked Erdogan especially for maintaining Turkish trade with Israel despite the war in Gaza.

“The result of this election was decided by the behaviour of those who continued to trade freely with Israel and the Zionist murderers,” he said Sunday.

Erdogan humbled

Although he avoided uttering the word “defeat”, Erdogan said Sunday’s vote was a “turning point” for his party after two decades in power.

The powerful Turkish leader had said earlier in March that these elections would be his last – although some analysts saw the declaration as a ruse to convince Turks to give him one more blank check.

Erdogan said Sunday his party would engage in self-criticism and learn lessons from election outcome.

Yeniden Refah’s success “could change Erdogan’s calculus (and) reshuffle his electoral alliance” after it outperformed his nationalist ally MHP, said Gonul Tol of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

(With agency inputs)