Opinion | In Turkey, Erdogan’s self-inflicted wound over Istanbul election rerun may yet prove fatal
- Last Sunday, the Turkish president lost his stranglehold on the country’s capital after losing the controversial rerun of a mayoral election
- Now, his Justice and Development Party risks disintegration, leave him at the mercy of the securalists and foreigners he has condemned for so long
Ironically, Erdogan – whose campaign to overturn the result of the initial vote went against his own record of seeking legitimacy at the ballot box – appears to have brought this upon himself, by inadvertently reviving a leitmotif of Turkish electoral politics: victimisation of aspiring leaders by the political establishment results in them being elevated to hero status.
Erdogan should have known better. As Istanbul’s mayor 20 years ago, his popularity soared after he was given a 10-month jail term for reciting a poem allegedly inciting violence and religious hatred. He was stripped of his mayoral seat, but was cast in the role of victim as a result – and was thus catapulted to national fame.
As if oblivious to that history, in the run-up to last Sunday’s election, Erdogan brought up Imamoglu’s alleged insult to a provincial governor as possible grounds for barring him from office, sending a warning that it would be unwise for the public to vote for a candidate whose chances of assuming office were questionable. The gambit failed spectacularly.