AKP Election Defeat Signals Shifting Political Landscape in Turkey

Fifth, Kurds continued playing a key role in the elections. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) Party won ten cities in south and southeastern Turkey. While DEM had a candidate in Istanbul, election results suggest that Kurds also favored İmamoğlu.[iii] In an interesting and concerning development, the regional electoral board invalidated DEM’s mayoral candidate Abdullah Zeydan’s victory in the eastern city of Van. The court’s decision sparked protests[iv] as opposition parties rallied around the DEM Party’s candidate. Surprisingly, the Supreme Election Council (YSK) overturned the local board’s decision and reinstated Zeydan as mayor.[v]

Finally, Erdogan and his party could become victims of their own doing. The AKP’s inability to recover from the economic crisis is also connected to increasing authoritarianism, serious backsliding on democratic standards, the rule of law, human rights, and judicial independence, and corruption coupled with a patronage system.[vi]

Corruption is a critical issue leading to resentment among voters, especially during times of deep economic crisis. Transparency International ranks Turkey 115/180 in the corruption index[vii], which states, “an overly dominant executive branch and few democratic checks and balances remaining in place. A lack of judicial independence also stands in the way of progress.

While the World Justice Project ranks Turkey 117th among 142 countries[viii], Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2024 report[ix] scores Turkey as ‘not free.’ The report further states that President Erdogan and his AKP “have become increasingly authoritarian in recent years, consolidating significant power through constitutional changes and by imprisoning opponents and critics.”[x]

Erdogan has three options at the domestic level. He may maintain the status quo by resorting to his current playbook, leveraging his control over the judiciary, the media, and state security agencies to suppress the opposition and critics—which will likely exacerbate sentiments of opposition. The AKP government may disregard the call to mend the rule of law and democratic processes. For example, the European Union[xi] and the Council of Europe[xii] “urged the Turkish authorities to immediately release Osman Kavala and Selahattin Demirtaş, in line with judgments from the European Court of Human Rights.” The legal crisis is not just limited to disregarding the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)’s ruling. At the domestic level, encouraged by Erdogan[xiii] and other AKP officials, lower courts ignore the decisions of even Turkey’s Constitutional Court.[xiv]

During the elections, the opposition candidates faced mounting obstacles and were deprived of media access. Citing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Freedom House reports “continued restrictions on freedoms of assembly, association and expression, political interference in the electoral process, and a lack of transparency”[xv] as significant issues in the election process in Turkey. Also, the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) is comprised of judges appointed by AKP-dominated judicial bodies who “often defer to the AKP in their decisions.”[xvi]

Second and related to the first option, Erdogan might want to deal with İmamoğlu by simply banning him from politics. A court has already sentenced İmamoğlu to two and a half years in prison and imposed a political ban on him for insulting public officials.[xvii] The appeal process is still pending. However, given local election results, if Erdogan chooses to attack him, it could elevate Imamoglu’s position further as well as validate Erdogan’s fear of him as a legitimate political contender in the eyes of the public. Such a scenario would be very similar to Erdogan’s own history in politics, once banned and out of prison in 1999, which ultimately elevated him to a position of leadership.