Turkiye opposition aims to hit back at Erdogan in local elections

ISTANBUL: Bruised and fractured by Tayyip Erdogan’s victory in 2023 general elections, Turkiye’s opposition aims to land a blow in Sunday’s local polls, with the future of its biggest hope, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, tied to the outcome.

The nationwide municipal votes on March 31 could reinforce President Erdogan’s control after two decades running Turkiye, or signal change in the Nato member’s deeply divided political landscape.

The results are likely to be shaped in part by economic woes driven by rampant inflation, and by Kurdish and Islamist voters weighing up the government’s performance and their hopes for political change.

Opposition hopes of transformation were fuelled by local election results in 2019 when they defeated Erdogan’s AK Party in the main two cities, Istanbul and Ankara, which had been run by the AKP and its Islamist predecessors for 25 years.

But Erdogan bounced back last year, retaining the presidency and winning a parliamentary majority with nationalist allies despite voters’ concerns about a cost-of-living crisis. In response, a broad opposition alliance splintered.

Polls show Imamoglu and the AKP candidate, former minister Murat Kurum, in a close race in Istanbul, a city of 16 million, where Erdogan made his name as mayor in the 1990s. The incumbent opposition mayor leads in the capital Ankara.

Erdogan has been seeking a bigger role for Turkiye on the world stage and sought to repair frayed ties with many nations in recent years, including in the Middle East. But during campaigning he said Turks should vote for the AKP to defend against unspecified enemies.