As it intensifies its efforts for the upcoming local elections, Türkiye’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is looking to inform the masses of municipal failures in constituencies the opposition’s Republican People's Party (CHP) has been ruling since the last mayoral polls in 2019.
The party’s primary goal is to regain the mayoralties of metropolitan cities like the capital Ankara, Istanbul, Mersin, Adana and Antalya from the CHP. In constituencies like Izmir, Kadıköy and Çankaya, historically CHP strongholds, the party aims for a serious spike in voter support.
To that end, the AK Party is working on a rundown of the activities of every CHP municipality, including towns and minor districts, to recap whether promises were kept. Officials said reports so far have shown the municipalities failed to deliver even 5-10% of their pledges from 2019.
Once the report is made public, the ruling party will argue the citizens didn’t receive service and cities have lost “a lot of time” under CHP municipalities in the past five years.
The party has been holding voter satisfaction surveys, especially in five cities where it saw its support drop in May’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The primary objective is to rekindle lost support in some 39 constituencies of Istanbul where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said his party must “conquer the hearts of everyone and launch a rebirth of municipalism.”
Officials are also hoping to cultivate support in Istanbul, which is seen politically as the most important administrative region in Türkiye and carries symbolic significance for Erdoğan since his time as mayor served as a launchpad for the foundation of the AK Party in 2001 and their subsequent election in 2003.
An exclusive theme song for Istanbul to remind voters of Erdoğan’s transformative services and key reforms he implemented after he was first elected as the city’s mayor in 1994, is also in the works.
The ruling party lost control of Istanbul and Ankara for the first time in 25 years, as well as five of Türkiye’s largest cities, to the CHP in the 2019 elections, something the opposition characterized as a blow to AK Party’s popularity but both the president and his party came out victorious in May.
Boasting the “highest youth vote” from some 3 million first-time voters in the last elections, as well as the youngest lawmaker to be elected in May, the AK Party is in the meantime aiming to cultivate its young cadres for the 2023 polls.
The party has seen a surge in the number of young members, leading Erdoğan and other deputies to call AK Party “the party of the youth.”
“Our communication with the youth isn’t daily but constant,” the party’s head of Youth Branches and Izmir member of Parliament Kadir Inan told Turkish newspaper Sabah in an interview on Monday.
All youth branches and organizations of the AK Party had been focused on the 2023 elections because “we take the issues of youths seriously and never loosened our grip in this field,” Inan said.
For the March local elections, all cadres are working in coordination across universities and district youth branches to make the most active use of some 1 million members in the field, according to Inan.
That field operation demonstrated the willpower of youths and it was reflected in the polls, he said and continued: “We will put up an even more active process in the coming months where the role of youths will be very big to win all the municipalities.”
Inan further dismissed “rumors” from 2021 that youth voters were “distant” to Erdoğan and emphasized the president’s “genuine and realistic pathfinding” for youths in Türkiye.
Indeed, Erdoğan held 45 one-on-one programs with the youth while campaigning for the elections. Building a “dynamic and young” Cabinet in a way that would “resonate with the aspirations of the new generation” and fostering necessary affirmative action for women and youths were top promises he made on his campaign trail.
Besides the 25-year-old Zehranur Aydemir and two others aged 30, the AK Party produced four lawmakers under 30 for the new term.
