Local Elections in Turkey : Role of Istanbul

Istanbul has ignited the race for the local elections scheduled to be held in Turkey on March 31, after the cards were mixed with many parties fielding candidates, which complicated the calculations of winning the largest and most important municipality that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to regain from the Republican People’s Party. .

The circle of candidates for the mayor of Istanbul has expanded, igniting a competition that will remain essentially confined between the current mayor from the Republican People’s Party, Ekrem Imamoglu, and the candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party, Murat Kurum, who is supported by the Nationalist Movement Party, a partner in the “Umma Alliance.” However, the candidates of other parties will have a great influence in determining the winner after distributing the votes of voters in a way that will make it difficult to predict who will decide the municipality of Istanbul in his favor.

Multiple candidates

The “Welfare Again” party, headed by Fatih Erbakan, announced on Saturday its candidate for the city of Istanbul, Mehmet Altin Oz, and also fielded former Minister of Youth and Sports Suat Kilic in Ankara and Cemal Arikan in Izmir. Thus, the party closed the door to the negotiations that were ongoing with it on the part of the ruling “Justice and Development” Party by not fielding candidates in the three largest states, especially Istanbul.

The matter did not stop with the “Renewed Welfare” Party, whose votes constitute a threat to the “Justice and Development Party” candidate, Murat Kurum. Ekrem Imamoglu received a strong blow with the announcement of the “Democracy and People’s Equality” Party, which supports the Kurds, to appoint the Vice-President of its participating parliamentary bloc, Meral. Danish Beştas and Murat Çebni, co-candidates for mayor of Istanbul.

The party has a voting bloc in Istanbul of more than 5 percent, which was a likely factor in Imamoglu’s victory as mayor in 2019, in addition to the alliance that existed with the “Good” Party headed by Meral Aksener, who also nominated the head of its branch in Istanbul, Bugra Kauncu, for mayor. . The nationalist "Victory" Party, headed by Umit Ozdag, also announced its candidate for Istanbul, Zafer Azmi Karaumutoglu.

The issue of the “Democracy and Equality of Peoples” Party’s cooperation with the “Republican People’s Party” was a matter of concern to the ruling “Justice and Development” Party, and opened the door to accusations by Erdogan against the party of “walking with terrorists.”

Demirtaş's denunciation

Basak Demirtas, the wife of the former co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party, announced that she was considering running for mayor of Istanbul, before she backed down (Thursday).

Talk has escalated in the corridors of politics in Ankara about the possibility of an undeclared agreement between the Kurdish Party and the Justice and Development Party in a deal that includes Demirtas running for mayor of Istanbul, to prevent Akrem Imamoglu from obtaining Kurdish votes, in exchange for the release of her husband, Selahattin Demirtas.

After Besak Demirtas announced that she would not run for mayor of Istanbul, Selahattin Demirtas published a statement on Friday night, Saturday, in which he denounced talk of a deal to nominate his wife. He said: “If you do not practice politics for the benefit of the people, the poor, the workers and the oppressed, then what you are doing is not politics, but rather (commerce... in the cities).”