Matt Broomfield
As the dust settles on Turkey’s local elections, there’s a clear loser – and also one emergent winner. The election results, which saw incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development (AKP) party shut out of crucial megacities Istanbul and Ankara for the second time in a row, are widely being represented as a blow to the foundations of his autocratic rule, and a message of dissent from voters angry over fiscal mismanagement which has driven the country’s economy into the ground.
We shouldn’t overstate the case. Despite an unexpectedly poor showing, President Erdoğan’s 20-year grip on political life in Turkey remains firm, and his equally unexpected triumph in last year’s general election demonstrates he’s not to be written off as yesterday’s man. Erdoğan has his own potential successors waiting in the wings, and even assuming he steps aside at the completion of the current term rather than indulging in constitutional chicanery to keep himself in power, his control of the country’s media and judicial institutions means he’ll be able to exert continued influence over the country’s course.
Nonetheless, it’s Ekrem İmamoğlu, the People’s Republican Party (CHP) candidate returning for a second spell as mayor of Istanbul, who grabbed global headlines following his bruising victory in the world’s sixth-largest city. İmamoğlu swept to victory thanks in no small part to votes from the city’s Kurdish population – commonly estimated at 3 to 4 million, or more than any city in Kurdistan itself. While the pro-Kurdish, pro-minority rights DEM Party sought to offer a third way in the city beyond the two competing flavours of nationalism which have long dominated Turkish politics, many Kurds gave their support to the only man with a chance of keeping the AKP out of office.
With his star on the rise, İmamoğlu has told the global press he plans to offer a substantiative alternative to the incumbent President, clearly with one eye on the 2028 Presidency. He’s been able to promote a more mainstream financial approach in Turkey’s largest city as an alternative to the course steered by Erdoğan, representing himself as the city’s fiscal saviour – and blaming Ankara for any shortcomings. And certainly, his social-democratic platform may well mark a turn away from the increasingly authoritarian rule adopted by Erdoğan, which has seen İmamoğlu himself battle criminal charges for ‘insulting’ a Turkish court.
But Kurds and those concerned with a deeper rot in Turkish politics will be aware that CHP touted a similar alternative at last year’s general election, only for their candidate to rapidly pivot back into attacks on the Kurds (and also Turkey’s large Arab refugee population) in an attempt to scoop up cheap votes from the centre and right. It didn’t work. Rather, CHP’s rightward lurch only underscored that the party’s social-democratic veneer is only skin deep.
The CHP represents the Kemalist tradition dating back to the Turkish Republic’s foundation, standing for a more or less authoritarian, centrally-controlled Turkish nationalism on the basis of a unitary national identity which is anathema to the Kurdish movement’s calls for decentralisation and pluralism. Notably, the CHP has backed Erdoğan’s deadly cross-border military operations against the democratic, Kurdish-led polity in North and East Syria, which have killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, while also demanding the forcible repatriation of Syrian refugees – a move which would only cement Turkey’s policy of ethnic cleansing and demographic change in northern Syria.
Following the defeat, Erdoğan is plotting his next move, and we shouldn’t be surprised if Turkey’s elder statesman does end up going head-to-head with İmamoğlu in four years’ time. This election might have been a defeat for Erdoğan – but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a victory for the Kurds.
*Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist, poet and activist. He writes for VICE, Medya News, the New Statesman and the New Arab; his prose has been published by The Mays, Anti-Heroin Chic and Plenitude; and his poetry by the National Poetry Society, the Independent, and Bare Fiction. His work was displayed across London by Poetry on the Underground, and he is a Foyle Young Poet of the Year.
