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

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the parliament in Ankara on June 25. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:00pm, 30 Jun 2019Updated: 5:00pm, 30 Jun 2019

The opposition’s landslide victory in Istanbul’s mayoral election rerun has spawned a new star on the Turkish political scene: Ekrem Imamoglu. The 49-year-old managed to break President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s quarter-century stranglehold on Turkey’s financial and commercial capital – and possibly the country – at a delicate time for the leader, who is confronting an anaemic economy and an insurgency in his own party.

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.

Republican People’s Party candidate Ekrem Imamoglu celebrates victory in the Istanbul mayoral election. Photo: AFP

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.

Imamoglu’s winning margin in the do-over election was more than 800,000 votes – a sea change from his 14,000-vote win the first time around. The landslide left no room for doubt: his opponent, Binali Yildirim, conceded quickly, and Erdogan followed suit, sending his congratulations via Twitter.