A Cry for Democracy
- Middle East & Africa Focus Group
- Apr 8
- 9 min read
How unrest ravages Turkey
The responsibility of governing over 16 million people along with 30% of the Turkish GDP bestows upon the Mayor of Istanbul the de-facto second most important political role in the country. Consequently, it’s not surprising that it is a problem if the officeholder, Metropolitan Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, is the sole challenger of a decade old presidency.
Rising Fighter of a Dying Arena
While not an unfamiliar name to Istanbulites, Imamoglu was catapulted on the national stage when he became the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP), which is Turkey’s opposition party , candidate for the Metropolitan Municipality of Istanbul. Ever since his upsetting victory, he’s spent years building up his national image, becoming a leading figure in Turkey’s fragmentary opposition bloc.
In 2019, as the candidate of the united opposition’s Nation Alliance, and with the help of the starting economic crisis, he scored a narrow win against the AKP candidate, former - and last - Prime Minister of Turkey Binali Yildirim. He held the office for two mere weeks, before being removed by a decision of Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council to annul the election for a repeat, in light of a series of claims around electoral fraud and voting irregularities. Imamoglu was re-elected in June of the same year by an even wider margin than his victory in March, establishing himself as a figure who could perform under pressure and overcome the obstacles placed on his path.
His first five-year term started with Istanbul dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemic and the consequential economic crisis, as the Turkish Lira lost most of its value and poverty reached disastrous levels. The political crisis that we are witnessing today started with legal and civic obstacles placed against his office during this term. Contrary to Turkish political custom, Imamoglu established himself as a national politician instead of a mere provincial bureaucrat, choosing to challenge roadblocks through his outspokenness, organizing rallies in other cities and creating a personal base of popular support that extends beyond his office and his party.
As Turkey got closer to presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023, Imamoglu on its own became a political authority and, consequently, a political opportunity. Alongside the similarly popular Mayor of Ankara, emerged as an extremely favored candidate against Erdogan. However, citizens' expectations were disregarded when Kemal Kilicdaroglu, at the time leader of the CHP, was announced as the presidential candidate of the united opposition.
One of the cornerstones leading up to the candidacy of Kilicdaroglu happened on December 14, 2022, when criminal courts decided on one of several cases against Ekrem Imamoglu, sentencing him to a ban from politics, a decision still being held in the Appeals Court. This paved the way to his dismissal as favorite candidate, while also establishing a dangerous precedent. Protesters gathered in front of his office, foreshadowing the popular support filling streets of Turkey today.
2023 was a year like no other, where almost all sides of the Turkish political arena played a long and demanding political battle. Imamoglu found himself in a poorly managed house of cards, built for promoting the ultimate candidacy of rather unpopular Kemal Kilicdaroglu, whose political strategy of constructing a diverse coalition, due to its infeasibility, left him
with scant opportunity to maneuver, before he ultimately lost on May 28.
Next morning, when hopes of change seemed next to impossible for the opposition, Imamoglu published a video from his office titled “Change”, kickstarting a rebellious campaign inside the CHP, aiming at receiving enough delegates to trigger a congress and replace Kilicdaroglu, who is notorious for building an absolute authority and influence over the said delegates in his time in office
The bottom-up aspect of this process has been an important step for the reform Imamoglu ought to bring to the national opposition. From CHP district offices to provincial offices, Imamoglu worked to get those with him to radically change the party organization. Ultimately, on the night of November 4, Kilicdaroglu became the first CHP chairman in history to be voted out, being replaced by pro-Imamoglu Parliamentary Group President Ozgur Ozel.
The political situation of the national opposition outside CHP was crumbling as the other parties broke away from the weak alliance of Kilicdaroglu, accusing CHP of incompetency and pursuing to undermine the de facto two-party system the last decades created.
Imamoglu secured candidacy for his next election for Mayor, and, despite all parties running a candidate and calls to the leftists and nationalists alike to defect from Imamoglu, he won by 51% of the votes on March 31, 2024, defeating all hopes for his adversaries in and outside CHP. Along with the endorsements from Ozel and his potential rivals in the party, he was declared as the sole candidate for the primary election. With political means exhausted, adversaries resorted to raising questions on his eligibility.
Istanbul University published a decision to annul Imamoglu’s Bachelor’s degree amid allegations of fraudulent transfer from another university back in the 1990s. Their decision was expected, as the public attention had been drawn to the issue by the media, intensifying in magnitude after his primary campaign started. The decision effectively banned him from continuing as in Turkey obtaining a Bachelor is a criteria to be eligible to be a candidate running for presidency.
Friction Points
Days before the primary election, Imamoglu was arrested, along with more than 100 employees of the Municipality, on charges including terrorism and corruption. The whole of the Turkish opposition - save for the Future Party, which had been in alliance with the CHP during the 2023 presidential election - condemned the act as anti-democratic, arguing that Erdogan sought to take his strongest opponent out before election season.
The government, on the other hand, insisted that serious breaches of the law had been committed by Imamoglu and those connected to him, designating him as the head of a “criminal organization”, details of which have not been disclosed. The event immediately triggered nationwide protests, when students of Istanbul University - already protesting the diploma decision - decided to march to the Municipality building.
Protests took place all over the country but concentrated in the centre of Istanbul: they were initiated mostly by independent university students, who marched from their campuses into the main squares of the city. The nexus of the protests would be in and around Saraçhane, the location of the Municipality building, where leader of the CHP Ozgur Ozel had invited demonstrators to gather, and settled to stay on the building for a week.
The government response was swift, with the governor of Istanbul declaring a blanket ban on all demonstrations, meetings, and press briefs for four days, as well as a slight restriction on the internet bandwidth across Istanbul. Despite this, by Ozel’s estimations, 300 thousand were present there on the evening of the 21st. Demonstrations have since spread throughout Turkey, with one held in Maltepe, Istanbul on the 29th of March attracting 2.2 million people.
Alongside the events taking place on the streets, the protests initiated a battle of differing narratives told through official and unofficial information channels. News sources close to the government have taken a strongly anti-protest position, at times entirely forgoing reporting on them, while several social media accounts have loudly disavowed the protesters. However, the composition of protesters have so far showcased an image to the wider public of a patriotic, general opposition movement seeking justice. Chants from previous election campaigns and demonstrations, such as Imamoglu’s famous slogan “Everything will be fine” and the common opposition chant “Rights, [Rule of] Law, Justice,” have been popular slogans of choice.
Police and demonstrators have had a mixed relationship. While most of the demonstrations have taken place without incidents, demonstrations in some locations have elicited stronger reactions from the police – including the use of tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons. Speaking once more from Saraçhane, Ozgur Ozel promised to stay in the square and criticized certain acts of the Turkish police, while also calling protesters to respect law enforcement. On his side, it has been a continuous play of keeping balance between protesters’ support and preventing any organized attacks from the government on the CHP in the event of a clash between them and the police. The opposition has continually re-emphasized the people’s constitutional rights to peacefully gather and conduct protests, while the government has sought to counter these statements by instead emphasizing the need for public order and national security, further stating that the demonstrations violate the Law on Meetings and Demonstration Marches. As of March 27th, Deutsche Welle reported 260 arrests, most of which are university students.
The Market Reaction
The economic implications of the protests deserve particular attention, especially considering that the government-affiliated media has been labeling Imamoglu’s corruption as a waste of taxpayer money. The economic situation, which was on the track of restoring lost investor confidence and economic strength, as well as the general crisis that has been ongoing since 2018. This partial recovery was caused by Erdogan’s new economic policy, as he turned away from his unorthodox low interest rates approach in response to record hyperinflation and as he halted the liquidation of the Central Bank’s foreign currency reserves to prop up the Turkish Lira leading up to the 2023 presidential election. There had even been cautious optimism among foreign investors that Mehmet Simsek, Erdogan’s new Minister of Finance, and his economic reform program would gradually stabilize the economic landscape.
On the day of Imamoglu’s arrest, the value of the Lira’s valuation dropped from 36.7 to the dollar to a record low of 42 per dollar, before smoothing out to about 38 lira per US dollar. This recovery came as the Central Bank liquidated more than $25 billion in foreign currency reserves, as of March 25th, to hold the lira in place, while foreign investors continued their exodus. After having had to rebuild with great difficulty their entire foreign currency coffers during the two years since Erdogan’s reelection as president; the Central Bank risks drying up the $100 billion portfolio if confidence in the lira does not return to levels before Imamoglu’s arrest, which is currently not likely.
The Turkish stock market has also tumbled following the event, with the benchmark BIST 100 index falling by 9 percent on the day. As widespread protests continued across the country, it lost more than 16 percent of its value by the 21st of March; the greatest weekly decline in the index since the 2008 financial crisis. With widespread consensus that political instability will continue, foreign confidence in the Turkish stock market has largely eroded.
While the markets have reacted to the turmoil, there is another financial development that may prove to be more disruptive for Erdogan’s inner circle than lost foreign investment. At a protest rally in Saraçhane on March 24th, CHP leader Ozel called for the popular boycott of a list of businesses – ranging from bookstore chains to several TV channels – all of which he said possessed proximal ties to the Turkish government. Although it is too early to tell how these boycotts will fare, several government officials already spoke against it, along with a restriction on the boycott website created by CHP. Per the opposition, these are signs of the suspected political ties of these businesses.
The removal of a mayor from the office amid arrest, as well as the possibility of a government official to be appointed as trustee (which did not happen in Imamoglu’s case purely on courts’ discretion) are forms of legal measures codified in Turkish law, but in practice they have been subject to political controversy. In this sense, it can also be noted that these events have taken place in the aftermath of the major, arguably first, defeat of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the 2024 local elections.
From a legal perspective, these practices are not unheard of as they were used during investigations primarily against mayorships won by HDP/DEM, Kurdish-minority party in the southeast region. Since these cases investigated suspected ties to PKK, which carried out many terrorist attacks inside Turkey, the political questioning of removals did not have a large scope and reactions were mostly regional. From this, it is understandable that the actions of the government in recent weeks have been seen as highly escalatory.
In conclusion, Imamoglu went to prison on March 23rd, the same day he was approved in the primary election with an unprecedented 15 million votes, amounting to more than 20% of the national voter base. It is hard to know what the atmosphere for the next presidential election will be, but any equation without him will surely raise questions about where the Turkish state wants to place itself in our changing globe.
Bibliography
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