Turkey is a beautiful and complicated country that never ceases to bewilder not only international observers but also, at times, its own citizens. The results of local elections held last Sunday came as a surprise to many pollsters. The opposition won a spectacular victory, changing the political landscape and shifting the dominant narrative. It would be naive to assume that it signals the end of an era, but it sure feels like a new beginning.
For so long now, the opposition in Turkey has been demoralised, fractured and weak against an unbridled concentration of power and authority. The lack of checks and balances, the lack of freedom of speech, the lack of free media and the lack of the separation of powers – these all stacked the cards against anyone who dared to question the Justice and Development party (AKP) government and its religious-nationalist-populist ideology.
People who wanted a secular, liberal and modern Turkey felt trapped in a cycle of lethargy, as though in a variation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – stuck in sameness, repetition, waiting for democracy.
On Sunday, this cycle was broken. For the first time in more than two decades the Republican People’s party (CHP), the main opposition party, was victorious at the national level and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP lost the popular vote. The CHP was hugely successful, not only in liberal cities such as Izmir on the Aegean coast, but in traditionally conservative and patriarchal Anatolian towns and in the Black Sea region, which until not long ago had been government strongholds. The last time the main opposition achieved such a glowing result was in 1977.
About 61 million Turkish citizens voted across 81 cities. The turnout was 77%: not as high as in the last national elections but still impressive. Among those who went to the polls were 1 million young people who were voting for the first time. The widespread public discontent with the state of the economy has played a substantial role in the results. Turkey’s official figure for inflation is just under 70%. The unofficial figure is estimated to be much higher. The devaluation of the Turkish lira has hit businesses of all sizes and harmed living standards.
But the results were not only about the economy. A cultural chasm is pivotal to it. As opposed to an inward-looking, navel-gazing, ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious, increasingly authoritarian and illiberal Turkey, the dream of a secular, democratic, pluralistic, inclusive and modern Turkey is still very much alive.
The man at the heart of this dream is none other than Istanbul’s charismatic mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu. Istanbul holds a fifth of Turkey’s population and accounts for a third of its economy; what happens in the megalopolis has massive consequences nationwide. President Erdoğan – a former mayor of the city – once said: “Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.” Before the local elections, Erdoğan led prayers at the Hagia Sophia – reviving an old tradition practised by Ottoman sultans before they would wage a war. The Hagia Sophia, which had been made into a museum by Atatürk in 1934, was converted into a mosque by the AKP, despite many objections from citizens who wanted to keep it as a secular space to honour the building’s rich history.
It is against this backdrop that the incumbent mayor of Istanbul, İmamoğlu – Erdogan’s most significant rival – achieved the highest margin of victory in 40 years. His motto has always been one of hope and optimism: “Everything will be fine.” But it is not a surprise that there are multiple legal cases opened against him. He could be put in jail or entirely banned from politics. In a moving post-election speech, İmamoğlu said to the celebrating crowds: “Starting from tomorrow, Turkey will be a different Turkey. You opened the door to the rise of democracy, equality and freedom.” On social media, he then shared: “As we celebrate our victory, we send a resounding message to the world: the decline of democracy ends now. Istanbul stands as a beacon of hope, a testament to the resilience of democratic values in the face of rising authoritarianism.”
In the capital, Ankara, the CHP mayor, Mansur Yavaş, also did remarkably well, gaining 60.4% of the vote. The chairman of the CHP, Özgür Özel, delivered a constructive and unifying speech while crowds chanted: “Turkey is secular and will remain secular.” For days afterwards, the celebrations continued as people lit torches and danced in the streets, honking horns and playing songs.
One of the most important indicators of the changing political landscape in Turkey is an increase in the number of female representatives. In the past decade, Turkey has witnessed a heartbreaking decline and regression in women’s rights and gender-equality goals. The AKP government has unilaterally withdrawn from the Istanbul convention, which is aimed at protecting the victims of gender violence. Today, a third of all marriages in the country involve child brides. According to We Will Stop Femicide Platform, a grassroots movement built by various feminist and LGBTQ+ rights advocates, at least 563 women were killed or lost their lives in suspicious circumstances in 2023 alone. Turkey is not an easy place to be a woman. It is, therefore, remarkable that in these elections the proportion of locally elected women has almost tripled. Today, with female mayors ruling over 11 out of 81 cities there is still a long way to gender equality, but it is a positive step forward.
A significant example of this is Gulistan Sonuk, of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) party. Only 31, she was elected in Batman, a deeply patriarchal and conservative city that in the past has been known for its alarmingly high suicide rates among young women. Batman is a stronghold of Hüda-Par, an Islamist party that is accused of having links to the banned militant group Kurdish Hezbollah (which the party denies). Before the elections, the candidate for the ultra-conservative party made a chilling remark under the pretext of a joke, saying that when they were elected they would allow the women in the city to choose the colour of their veil.
Despite this atmosphere, Sonuk received 65% of the vote. Sonuk said: “Hüda-Par did not see me as a competitor because I was a woman. The last thing they wanted was to lose to a young woman. That makes me incredibly proud.” She was applauded enthusiastically by crowds chanting, “Women, life, freedom”, in an emotional reference to the plight of women in Iran.
“The essential doesn’t change,” says one of the characters in Samuel Beckett’s play. But sometimes it might. In this year of global elections, when half the world’s population will be voting or have voted across 50 countries, this result should be seen as a sign of hope and solace.
Elif Shafak is a novelist and political scientist
