TURKEY POLLS: DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

April 5, 2024

Hi all,

This is Soner Cagaptay. I would like to welcome you to my Substack. In addition to my regular analysis on Turkish politics and foreign policy, here I will share occasional takes on Turkey, with a focus on the country’s political landscape, cultural geography, demographics, and wonderful patrimony (I used to be a tour guide in Turkey for many years, and I am a fan of Ottoman mosques!), as well as Turkish linguistics (one of my favorite topics) as a bonus!

Please see below my first Substack feed on Turkey’s March 31 mayoral polls, whose extraordinary outcome needs to be parsed out in detail. As a friend put it, Turkey never ceases to surprise…

Feel free to share this feed, as well as inviting your colleagues and friends to subscribe. Also feel free to adjust your subscription below. I wish you a nice weekend and look forward to seeing you on my Substack.

Soner

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TURKEY POLLS: DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

What happened?

On March 31, millions of Turkish voters went to the ballot box to elect mayors and other local officials in nationwide elections. However, in a surprise to almost everyone, including the pollsters, a significant number of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s supporters stayed home. Angered by high inflation, but not wanting to abandon the president (yet), these voters abstained. Others, piqued by the tired image of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), went to the fresh-looking, hard-Islamist New Welfare Party (YRP).

With the AKP underperforming, Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) made major gains across the country, winning mayoral races in most big cities, as well as making headways into the Anatolian hinterland, an Erdogan bastion. Consequently, the CHP’s support among the voters soared, from its usual tally (around 25 percent) to nearly 38 percent. For the first time in twenty-one years, Erdogan’s AKP emerged as the second faction in Turkey’s polls, trailing Ataturk’s party by more than two points.

The CHP recently elected Ozgur Ozel as its new chair, dropping Kemal Kilicdaroglu, an uninspiring, but nice guy, who failed to defeat Erdogan in last year’s presidential election. The change in leadership helped the CHP’s success, as did support by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) Party. Although the latter fielded its own candidates for mayors across the country, in some key races, such as Istanbul, the faction advised its base to support the CHP candidates, and they did! Istanbul’s CHP mayor Ekrem Imamoglu defeated Erdogan’s candidate Murat Kurum by a whopping 11.5-point margin, holding on to his job as the mayor of Turkey’s business and financial capital, and emerging from the race as the only politician in Turkey who can defeat Erdogan. More importantly, Imamoglu put together a red-and-blue base of voters (from pious and nationalist voters to liberals and secularists) that helped him to victory. Contrast this to Erdogan’s narrower red base, and you see why the future is promising to Imamoglu.

Of course, Erdogan was not himself running in Istanbul, but this is the third time (the first two in 2019) that he failed to overshadow Imamoglu. With voters casting ballots across the entire country, mayoral and local elections in Turkey serve as a bellwether for the country’s politics –the equivalent of American midterms. March 31 was indeed a humbling day for Turkey’s president.

What will Erdogan do?

We know Erdogan for his comebacks. Accordingly, I expect him to start with the economy, his weakest spot entering election day, to rebuild his base. His goal is to stabilize the country’s finances and curb inflation, making up with upset voters, subsequently bringing them back to his big tent. To this end, he will continue to encourage investment flows from the Gulf and Russia, while courting the markets (read West), to jump start the economy. This means Erdogan will continue to play all sides globally, with little change for Ankara’s foreign policy in the short-term. At some point, and as the next step, he will need to co-opt hard-Islamist YRP, by pandering to the latter's socially conservative policies. He will also polarize to divide Imamoglu’s blue-and-red base. Not much change on the domestic front either, considering Erdogan’s track record.

What the outcome means for opposition prospects

Shifting gears to the opposition, Imamoglu is now a rock star. He not only defeated Erdogan ¬for the third time, ¬but also kept Istanbul, which accounts for 40 percent of Turkey’s GDP and holds great symbolism in Turkish politics, in his hands.

Imamoglu has also established himself as the “star politician who can defeat Erdogan.” This has rejuvenated Turkey’s opposition. More troubling for Erdogan, the president seems to have a "successor problem": anyone he runs as a proxy gets crushed by Imamoglu, who is much younger than Erdogan and who seems poised to be Erdogan’s vanquisher.

Can Imamoglu defeat Erdogan?

Imamoglu, like Erdogan, hails from Black Sea. He, too, deeply fascinates Turkey’s Black Sea-origin citizens, who, honestly, these days dominate among Istanbul voters and in the country’s politics. Being from Black Sea in Turkey is a bit like being from Texas in the United States: your regional identity makes you a bigger patriot and not less.

What is more, Imamoglu is no beginner to Erdogan politics. In fact, I have always thought of the two men as having comparable political charisma. This sets the stage for a showdown between the two ahead of Turkey's 2028 presidential elections, and potentially sooner, with Erdogan taking steps to fracture Imamoglu’s red-and-blue base. Imamoglu’s ascent will continue to the extent that he can keep his coalition in place. I give each leader fifty percent chance for success. The game is on in Turkey!

Stay tuned until my next Substack feed on Turkey’s turns, twists, and infinitely fascinating dynamics….

All the best,