Bayram Balci is a researcher at CERI/Sciences Po Paris and former director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.
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On March 31, Turks will go to the polls for the municipal elections.
The vote is less trivial than it seems, because it was at this last deadline in 2019, and one of the rare times in 20 years of electoral victories, that Tayyip Erdogan's presidential camp stumbled, losing control of several major cities, including Ankara and Istanbul.
The event gave hope to the Turkish opposition of putting an end to the reign of the strong man of the AKP party.
This was not the case since in May 2023, he triumphed again, with a double victory, in the legislative and presidential elections, further ensuring his incredible political and governmental longevity until 2028. Therefore, what importance should be given to the present elections municipal, since they will not overturn the table?
Or, precisely, can next Sunday's elections be a harbinger of what the Turkey of tomorrow will be?
Although local and throughout the country, it is however towards the great megalopolis of Istanbul that all eyes are focused.
Because whoever controls Istanbul controls Turkey, or almost.
With its 16 million inhabitants, Istanbul and its region concentrate most of the country's wealth, in addition to being its intellectual capital.
Also, the context, local but with national issues, presents advantages and disadvantages both for Erdogan's party and for the Republican People's Party from which the current mayors of large cities, notably Ankara and Istanbul, come.
For the ruling party camp, the delicate economic context is proving to be a real handicap.
Inflation remains at a particularly high level, and Turks are struggling to cope with everyday economic and financial difficulties.
Retirees, for example, who are numerous in the Turkish population and constitute a significant electoral force, are no longer able to get by at all, despite family solidarity still being strong in Turkey.
They rightly place the responsibility for their economic ill-being on the ruling party, the AKP, and accuse its leader, Tayyip Erdogan, of these disastrous results.
Also, these poor economic performances by Tayyip Erdogan risk harming the candidate he himself chose to win back the mayorship of Istanbul, Murat Kurum.
Furthermore, the latter, despite his past as a minister, suffers from a lack of charisma which reinforces his anonymity on the domestic political scene.
The man is unknown to the general public, and it is Tayyip Erdogan who is campaigning for him.
The reversed observation is also verified: Tayyip Erdogan is as charismatic and energetic a rhetorician as he eclipses his second knives.
He demonstrated it again at last Sunday's meeting, giving the impression that he himself was running for mayor of Istanbul.
A victory in these municipal elections would make it possible to cement for a long time the hold of Tayyip Erdogan or his disciples on the territories by 2028, and would deeply anchor Turkey in a conservative and nationalist line.
Bayram Balci
However, all is not dark for Tayyip Erdogan's candidate.
Murat Kurum benefits from a favorable international context, which his party knows how to use, including in local elections.
Indeed, Turkey's good positioning in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the recent victory of ally Azerbaijan in the Karabakh war were appreciated by a Turkish population sensitive to international issues.
But the main advantage of candidate Murat Kurum lies elsewhere, on two other levels.
First, he benefits from the fact that his party and Tayyip Erdogan control most of the country's institutions, providing him with political, economic and media resources to disseminate his campaign messages.
But above all, he takes advantage of the weakness of the opposition, more disorganized than ever.
It is a long way from the time of the previous elections of 2023, when she was able to put aside her divisions and tensions to win as a whole.
Some parties left the opposition coalition which had been formed during the presidential and legislative elections, such as the IYI party (the Good Party) but also and above all, the pro-Kurdish party, DEM Party (Democracy Party). , which decided to present its own candidates separately.
Indeed, while the Kurdish political elites had bet on the opposition to beat Tayyip Erdogan, they realize that the latter, despite the repression he carries out against the Kurdish political forces, remains and remains, with his political family the privileged and essential institutional interlocutors for a possible new process to resolve the Kurdish question.
Estimates and opinion polls announce very close results in the big cities, but predict a narrow victory for Ekrem Imamoglu who has ruled Istanbul since he managed to wrest it from power from the AKP in 2019. good management of this great metropolis obviously plays in favor of a possible re-election.
But beyond the results in Istanbul, which captures most of the attention, what scenarios are emerging for Turkey in the aftermath of these elections?
If the AKP were to return to local affairs in the large cities of Ankara and Istanbul, this would facilitate the work of Tayyip Erdogan and his team to establish his political strategy for 2028 as closely as possible on the ground. , encouraged to carry out a constitutional reform which will allow him to run again in 2028 because for the moment he does not constitutionally have the right to be a candidate.
And even if he were to give up running for office in 2028, as he recently declared, there is no doubt that the AKP will not miss the opportunity to prepare for the future.
In other words, a victory in these municipal elections would make it possible to cement for a long time the hold of Tayyip Erdogan or his disciples over the territories for 2028, and would deeply anchor Turkey in a conservative and nationalist line.
If the opposition emerged victorious, it would have a chance to put an end to the power of Tayyip Erdogan and break with a policy of rupture, which, for ten years, has only widened the gap between Ankara and European capitals.
Bayram Balci
Conversely, the victory of the opposition in Ankara and Istanbul could shatter the feeling of invincibility of the Erdogan camp.
And in this scenario, Ekrem Imamoglu, already quite popular since his 2019 victory, will have the wind in his sails to establish himself as leader of the opposition.
It would then not be impossible to see him run for the presidential election of 2028. He would then be able to embody and crystallize all the opposition to the illiberal regime of Tayyip Erdogan.
On the international level, the result of these elections is not without importance, particularly for Europe.
If the opposition emerged victorious, it would have a chance to put an end to the power of Tayyip Erdogan and break with a policy of rupture, which, for ten years, has only widened the gap between Ankara and European capitals.
However, a victory for this opposition, a promise of a possible return of certain freedoms and a chance for political change at the head of the country in 2028, would have difficulty overcoming the tensions accumulated with Europe and with the West as a whole.
The authoritarian drift in Turkey, which is embodied by this distrust of the West, is part of a regional and international trend that goes beyond its borders.
The de-Westernization of the Global South is a groundswell.
In addition, Tayyip Erdogan's choices in terms of foreign policy follow a form of Gaullian and sovereignist model, which draws support from a broad spectrum of the Turkish political class.
An alternation at the top of power in 2028 would not guarantee a return of the country to the Western fold, which has been diverted everywhere in the South.
His interference is now met with more resistance;
its influence decreases as competition grows.