By Edgar Şar
Edgar Şar received his PhD in political science in 2024 from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He is a co-founder and current director of IstanPol Institute, an Istanbul-based think tank. Şar is also a research affiliate at the CEU Democracy Institute. His research interests include (de-)democratization and opposition strategies in authoritarian regimes.
After five years, the opposition achieved another remarkable victory at the Turkish local elections of March 31. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) emerged as the largest political force at the national level, consolidating its power in local governments across the country. Unofficial results indicate that in addition to the major cities it won already in 2019, the CHP also triumphed in another four as well as in eleven provinces.
This remarkable achievement holds considerable socioeconomic importance for the main opposition party.
The Republican People’s Party will now govern cities where 62 percent of the country’s population resides, more than 70 percent of the GDP is generated, and more than 80 percent of Turkey’s exports come from.
Furthermore, the CHP’s success in provinces where it has traditionally struggled due to social-political polarization – a key tool for President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to maintain power – is particularly noteworthy.
These unexpected election results raise several important questions. First, how could the opposition achieve such a remarkable victory only ten months after President Erdoğan’s re-election in the May 2023 general elections that followed the fragmentation of the opposition bloc? Second, and more importantly, what insights do these victories provide into electoral strategies for opposition parties in authoritarian electoral contexts? This op-ed seeks to answer these questions.
The reasons behind the opposition victory and its implications for Turkey
To begin with, the results represent the most significant electoral defeat in Erdoğan’s political career.
Unlike in the 2019 local elections, Erdoğan’s ruling bloc not only lost major cities but also ceded its position as the country’s largest political force after two decades – something it had managed to retain incessantly despite occasional electoral setbacks.
Beyond mere numbers, this defeat is likely to profoundly impact Erdoğan’s and his ruling bloc’s morale.
Several factors contributed to this outcome. Firstly, there appears to have been a delayed willingness among the electorate to express dissatisfaction with President Erdoğan. Turkey’s economy has been struggling since 2018 which has only been exacerbated by Erdoğan’s economic policies, especially following the pandemic. This resulted in a three-year-long economic crisis marked by hyperinflation. While the President’s populist economic measures prior to the general elections last year temporarily alleviated issues such as unemployment and consumer confidence, a return to mainstream economic policies with certain austerity measures post-election intensified discontent, especially among the middle and lower classes.
In fact, disillusionment with the Erdoğan government was already widespread before the May 2023 general elections. However, internal power struggles within the opposition bloc, coupled with their proposal of a chaotic-sounding government model, hindered them from emerging as a viable alternative to Erdoğan in the eyes of the majority.
Therefore, the belated willingness among Erdoğan’s conventional voters to teach him a lesson, by either supporting other alternatives or staying at home, manifested itself much stronger than expected on March 31.
Another factor contributing to the results was the inclusive and successful campaign of the main opposition CHP. Following the leadership change within the CHP after the May 2023 election setback, 49-year-old Özgür Özel replaced longstanding CHP leader – and joint oppositional presidential candidate – Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The transformation within the CHP under the leadership of Özgür Özel and the charismatic mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was perceived as a laudable effort to learn from past mistakes. Additionally, the CHP’s transformation ushered in a new generation of local politicians alongside national figures like İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, who played a significant role in mobilizing opposition voters frustrated after last year’s election fiasco.
Despite its ultimate decision to run alone, the CHP actually attempted to form a fresh opposition alliance ahead of the local elections. However, while there were some minor exceptions, other opposition parties typically rejected to negotiate an alliance and primarily campaigned against the CHP.
By contrast, the CHP refrained from engaging in polemics with other opposition parties and pledged to build the necessary anti-authoritarian alliance at the level of voters.
The results indicate that the CHP has managed to achieve this goal through the overwhelming support of opposition voters.
Finally, the decision of the Islamist New Welfare Party (YRP) not to align with the ruling bloc, unlike in the May 2023 general elections, allowed it to emerge as a viable alternative for conservative voters. Eager to signal their dissatisfaction with Erdoğan but hesitant to support the main opposition CHP due to the preexisting social-political polarization, such voters could now turn to the YRP. The YRP emerged as the third-largest party as the result, securing 6.2 percent of the votes (compared to 2.8 percent in May 2023). It won mayoral seats in one major city and over 60 provincial districts.
In short, Erdoğan’s victory in the May 2023 general elections, despite widespread discontent among the electorate already back then, led to overconfidence regarding the outcomes of the local elections. The President’s failure to address this discontent adequately resulted in an unexpected mobilization of voters against his ruling bloc.
The implications of Turkish opposition’s victory for wider authoritarian contexts
What lessons can we draw from the Turkish opposition’s experience regarding opposition strategies under electoral authoritarianism?
So far, electoral cooperation through alliance-building has often been considered a viable opposition strategy against autocratic incumbents’ majoritarian and polarizing politics. In countries like Turkey and Hungary, which have undergone processes of autocratization culminating in electoral authoritarianism, the formation of broad-based united opposition fronts were deemed crucial for mobilizing a majority against populist autocrats in power who supposedly consistently benefit from opposition fragmentation. Both the Turkish and Hungarian oppositions learned this lesson after enduring a series of electoral defeats during their countries’ autocratization processes.
Broad-based and cross-ideological opposition alliances in both countries achieved significant gains against Erdoğan and Orbán, respectively, in the 2019 local elections. By continuing this strategy, opposition parties expected similar success in the general elections.
However, the fiascos in the 2022 Hungarian and 2023 Turkish elections demonstrated that this approach of the opposition had failed.
Analysts in both countries have tended to exaggerate the significance of “wrong candidates” when explaining the opposition’s defeat. A deeper examination of the pre- and post-election periods, however, reveals a more complex array of factors contributing to the opposition’s defeat.
The cooperation strategy of the Turkish and Hungarian opposition blocs suffered from at least two major flaws. First, internal power struggles within the opposition blocs, particularly during candidate selection, weakened their stance against autocratic incumbents. Second, the formation of joint opposition blocs eroded the distinct identities of the participating parties, leading to the emergence of new reactionary political entities like Mi Hazánk in Hungary and ATA Alliance in Turkey, which managed to siphon off significant votes from the united opposition. The united opposition strategy thus failed to achieve its objectives, and the momentum for opposition cooperation was disrupted following the electoral fiascos.
In was under these circumstances that Turkey’s opposition parties entered the pre-March 31 electoral period. Opposition voters, frustrated by past defeats, were not optimistic, knowing that much of the opposition’s success in the 2019 local elections relied on cooperation. Conversely, President Erdoğan aimed to reclaim Istanbul, having great confidence in his bloc’s electoral prospects thanks to the opposition’s fragmentation.
While actively campaigning for AKP’s mayoral candidates nationwide, Erdoğan primarily targeted the main opposition CHP. The CHP faced attacks not only from the ruling bloc but also from other opposition groups, notably the Good Party (IYIP), which had declined to negotiate a new alliance. The majority of anti-Erdoğan voters nonetheless rallied behind the CHP, enabling it to achieve a greater victory than the joint opposition bloc did five years earlier.
Local elections can yield quite unexpected outcomes even in authoritarian contexts, as evidenced by the cases of Turkey and Hungary.
Achieving similar gains in general elections can prove challenging for the opposition.
Having said that, the victory of Poland’s opposition in October 2023 amidst populist autocratization already highlighted the potential effectiveness of cooperation without a united front.
However, this strategy was also facilitated by Poland’s proportional parliamentary representation, which the Turkish and Hungarian political systems lack.
Despite this difference, recent experiences, including the March 31 local elections in Turkey, underscore the need for both oppositions to devise new strategies for counter-autocratic cooperation to win general elections.
