Has Turkey turned on Erdoğan?

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AK Party (AKP) suffered their worst defeat in more than two decades in local elections on Sunday.

The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) retained mayoral seats in the key cities of Istanbul and Turkey's capital Ankara, and gained 15 new seats across the country. Many were in cities seen as traditional "strongholds" of Erdoğan and the AKP.

For the CHP, Sunday's vote was a "make-or-break moment for a movement still reeling" from Erdoğan's momentous victory in presidential elections last May, said Politico. 

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The greatest triumph for the CHP was in Istanbul, where the party's Ekrem Imamoğlu clinched a second term as mayor. Imamoğlu is now widely viewed as Erdoğan's main presidential challenger, after "winning the city which catapulted the current president to national prominence when he won the mayorship 30 years ago". 

What did the commentators say?

"Less than a year ago, Turkey's main opposition parties were in a slough of despond" after Erdoğan, the country's authoritarian leader, "comfortably" won a third term, said The Guardian.   "Years of clientelism, culture wars and overwhelming media dominance appeared to have rendered Erdoğan's strongman politics all but unassailable at national level." 

It is hardly surprising then that the CHP's "spectacular and unanticipated turnaround" in Sunday's local elections "prompted wild celebrations into the early hours".

The "drubbing" for the AKP came as Turkey's long-running economic crisis "finally became too much for many voters to bear", said the Financial Times. Erdoğan, whose "unorthodox" economic policies have been blamed for triggering rapidly rising inflation, has historically resorted to populist handouts ahead of elections. This included a month of free natural gas for voters before last spring's presidential election, which he won despite an attempt by a six-party opposition alliance to defeat him. 

Since then, however, Erdoğan has resisted offering another raft of populist measures and instead stuck to his government's economic policies "in an attempt to finally extinguish the inflation crisis with a return to a more orthodox economic approach". Known as a "shrewd politician and unforgiving campaigner", Erdoğan also made "a series of missteps that amplified the scale of AKP's loss". In particular, he underestimated the impact of the smaller parties that hold sway over conservatively religious voters. 

"In the streets of Istanbul, as well as on social media, people already talk about 'the beginning of the end' for Erdoğan," said Daniel Thorpe in The Spectator. The election results have proven that the president is "not invincible", but whether the end of his 22-year rule is in sight "is too early to say".

What next?

Whether the CHP's success will last until the next presidential election "remains to be seen", said The Telegraph. "Before heading to polling stations, some Turks spoke of voting for what they considered the lesser of two evils; others, disillusioned by the country's deeply divided political landscape, didn't bother to vote at all." Turnout, at 76%, was lower than the 87% for last year's presidential elections. 

While Sunday's results have "revitalised the opposition", said the FT, Erdoğan "remains one of Turkey's most popular politicians," and enjoys largely unchecked power. There is "ample" time for the AKP to regroup and for Erdoğan's controversial economic programme to "bear fruit" ahead of the next presidential election, in 2028.

But Sunday's "stinging rebuff" to the ruling party "may dissuade Erdoğan from seeking further constitutional change to allow him to run for yet another term as president", said The Guardian. Turkey has undergone a "relentless erosion of democratic checks and balances on Erdoğan's watch". And while the governing coalition led by the AKP is not big enough to change the constitution again on its own, "a stellar result in Sunday's elections could have tilted political momentum its way". 

Strengthening the president's stranglehold over Turkish politics would have been "a disaster for Turkish democracy". Instead, there is reason to hope that "Erdoğan's star may finally be on the wane".