In battle for Istanbul, city election could decide a country’s future

As a result, she said, “winning Istanbul is considered to be winning Turkey” — partly because of the economic clout that comes with control of the city’s budget, and partly because of its “profound symbolic significance” for Erdoğan himself, who launched his career with a surprise victory in the city’s mayoral elections exactly 30 years ago. 

Those ties are among the reasons Erdoğan was so stunned by the triumph in the last mayoral contest of Republican People’s Party candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu — an opposition politician who, for some, has achieved a superstar quality in Turkish politics.

Indeed, so aghast was the AKP at İmamoğlu’s shock 2019 Istanbul win that it engineered a rerun of the poll — but lost in a landslide. It remains one of the ruling party’s most ignominious defeats to date.

Five years on, Erdoğan is trying to finish off his younger rival — and with him Turkey’s fractious opposition. 

“If İmamoğlu loses, the secular opposition will not be able to gather its forces, will be in complete disarray and unable to challenge the current governing bloc and the consolidation of an increasingly Islamizing and authoritarian system,” said Soli Özel, a senior political analyst at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. 

Özel projected that it could take a decade for the opposition to recover from a defeat in Istanbul and in other major cities like Ankara.