Challenged By Losing Power In 17 City Municipalities Will Erdogan Change The Turkiye Constitution?

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, 52, businessman cum politician, is the victor for the second time, elected mayor of Istanbul. He had also won in 2019. Imamoglu is now seen as the main rival to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, though he was debarred from standing for the presidency in 2023. Other contenders include Mansur Yavas who won the mayorship of Ankara, also for the consecutive second time.

Their party, the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), that invokes modern Turkey founder Kemal Ataturk, displaying posters of him, secured victories in the commercial hub of Istanbul by over a million votes.

Other wins by the CHP and the multi-party opposition, included the capital Ankara, important cities of Izmir, Bursa, Antalya, amongst the seven largest, making up a total of 17 cities.

The main cause of these seismic changes is the alarming state of the Turkish economy. But it would it be too much to call it a de facto referendum on Erdogan, because his core supports want him to stand firm.

Stand still, this nation is with you - they shouted back as he greeted followers from the party HQ balcony in Ankara. Of course, they must be aware of the sweeping powers of the presidency under his belt.

Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was defeated roundly in urban Turkiye where inflation and costs hit harder than in the countryside. These losses are signalling a definite shift in Turkiye politics.

Erdogan has dominated Turkish politics for 21 years now. He has been prime minister from 2003, and then president since 2014. He himself called these dramatic election results a ‘turning point’, and vowed to right all wrongs.

Some of the municipalities in the south east have once again been won by Kurdish parties suspected of having ties with terrorists and militants. They may not be allowed to take over by Erdogan, any more than in 2019.

Now 70, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, born and raised in Istanbul, the populous premier city of 16 million people, also started his political rise when he became its mayor in 1994.  

The opposition may have won the municipalities now via some 61 million eligible voters and a 76% voter turn-out across 81 provinces, but lost in parliamentary and presidential elections in 2023.

This latest vote comes on the horns of runaway inflation at 67% that is roiling the cost of living. People are having difficulty putting food on the table, buying essentials, paying for utilities. Erdogan’s efforts to control it via a tight monetary policy with an interest rate of 50% have made life difficult for Turkish businesses as well. And hope of reducing inflation to some 36% sounds like a pipe dream.

Erdogan, slipping at the hustings, will most likely now push anew to usher in a new constitution he has been advocating for some time. This would need a two-thirds majority of legislators of course and so he may have to wait for the right time. It would reflect his brand of Islamic conservatism, and most likely allow him to rule beyond 2028, when his current term ends.

The question is, does Turkiye want more Islamic conservatism though? Is it keen to see Erdogan ousted  on both counts, his hard line Islamist tendencies and because the economy is in a shambles?

Current goings on are a far cry from reformist-founder Kamal Ataturk’s modern  Republic of Turkey established during his term from 1923 till his death in 1938. Ataturk, a field marshal before he became president, westernised the country, insisted on western dress, famously banned the colonial era tasselled fez, pushed back against the influence of the mullahs, all this in trying to get over the imperialist legacies of the finally defeated Ottomans after WWI.

Turkiye then spent decades aspiring to join the EU but was not ultimately admitted. But Erdogan’s Turkiye seems to have rejected the Ataturk legacy. Is the political spectrum coming full circle however via at least parts of the dominant opposition?

Consider that it is a much more Islamic fundamentalist Turkiye now, yet it is a NATO member, an organisation created essentially to defend Europe. Turkiye sits on the edge of Europe and Asia, and indeed Russia. A conservative Islamist Turkiye in context is something of an anomaly.

The erstwhile much publicised charm of the Orient Express, the romance of Istanbul, both Eastern and Western, the land of carpets and Turkish coffee and Delight, was long palatable to the Western traveller and tourist alike from the 1920s onwards. It was also popular with the overland  hippie trail of the seventies.

But under Erdogan, it has been replaced by those who put their women once again in hijabs. This is bad for business because even the Islamic world of 57 countries, do not, by and large, subscribe to fundamentalism, as is evident in the OIC. Erdogan’s allies there have dwindled to just Pakistan and possibly Qatar.

The Turkish Lira was trading at 32.43 to the US dollar the Monday after the municipal election, pretty much at a record low. The Turkish currency has lost 40% against the US dollar over the past year, and some 83% over the last five years. As can be seen, the rate of decline has only accelerated sharply.

The silver lining for Erdogan’s survival is the disunited opposition that often espouses different points of view. Though his party won the parliamentary elections handsomely, his own win last year as president was a narrow one over opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Now the best efforts of his party to win the municipalities back, particularly that of Istanbul, have squarely failed. Istanbul has long supported Erdogan’s conservative religious inclinations, but, it appears, no longer. Two elections in a row indicate a departure. Likewise in the capital Ankara.

With the Turkiye economy just about at $1 trillion in GDP, there is a huge challenge to both grow it and set it right. Recent past efforts at effective economics have not worked, and Erdogan needs to think outside the box before it is too late.

(1,027 words)

April 3^rd, 2024

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee