Türkiye’s main opposition party on Thursday officially confirmed its current mayors of the country’s two biggest cities would run for second terms in high-stakes local elections next year.
Ekrem Imamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş have been named as the Republican People’s Party's (CHP) candidates for Istanbul and Ankara, respectively, in the municipal elections slated for March 2024, party spokesperson Deniz Yücel said.
The two were elected after a vote during the CHP’s party assembly.
The assembly also named former CHP Deputy Chair Ahmet Akın as its mayoral candidate for the western province of Balıkesir.
Mustafa Bozbey will run for mayor of the northwestern province of Bursa, Yücel said. Bozbey is a former mayor of Bursa’s Nilüfer district.
Still reeling from a loss in May's general elections, CHP is struggling as it has lost its biggest ally in an attempt to forge a united front against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling coalition.
The opposition bloc joined forces in the landmark 2019 elections that saw the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) lose power in Istanbul and Ankara for the first time in Erdoğan’s rule.
But its efforts to do the same in May's presidential election fell short and ended in bitter internal feuds. The CHP last month ousted Erdoğan's challenger and its longstanding chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and picked the relatively untested power broker Özgür Özel to lead the party in March.
The right-wing nationalist Good Party (IP) pulled out of the alliance in the wake of the election and blamed the CHP for the opposition's poor showing in the parliamentary portion of May’s vote.
Though it is confident of keeping seats in traditional strongholds like Izmir in western Türkiye, the election race will be tight elsewhere. The AK Party is expected to run an intense campaign to retake seats it lost to the CHP in the 2019 vote.
Both Yavaş and Imamoğlu have lost some of their luster as public complaints over insufficient municipal services increased.
Imamoğlu is also currently facing the threat of being barred from politics in an ongoing lawsuit over his insulting of a public official.
The CHP is the No. 2 party in Türkiye in terms of support but needs votes from other opposition parties to win in certain cities. It tried to rally an opposition alliance just as it did before the May vote, but its biggest ally, IP, refused the call earlier this month.
And the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the CHP’s second-biggest ally largely affiliated with the PKK terrorist group, which informally changed its name to Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (HEDEP) (and later to DEM) recently announced plans to run its own candidates in March, a move that could help Erdoğan’s allies by splitting the vote in ethnically mixed cities such as Istanbul. The HDP has some 10% support nationwide, mostly from Kurdish voters.
The AK Party is expected to unveil its candidates in the coming days. Some 6,000 people applied for candidacy for the AK Party. Erdoğan, who also serves as AK Party chair, will give final approval to the candidate list after consulting with the party administration.
The party recently held a digital vote, asking its members to choose among potential candidates. The party is already conducting public opinion polls on potential candidates.
The AK Party launched an unofficial election campaign one day after the first round of the general elections on May 14. Despite uncertainty about the outcome of the runoff held on May 28, the party has already focused on municipal elections. It first renewed cadres, replacing 52 provincial chairs and over 400 district chairs.
Following the recent extraordinary congress, the party also added new names to its central executive committee and parted ways with some stalwart figures.
Erdoğan has instructed his party to seek out candidates with a good public image, "not candidates simply favored (by political lobbies)."