Central Turkish province of Konya, a traditional stronghold of conservative voters, hosted President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday, ahead of the March 31 municipal elections. Before he introduced his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) candidates, Erdoğan rallied a crowd of more than 100,000 people for support to what he called "policies for services and new structures." Erdoğan’s speech, as is his custom, also focused on a fierce criticism of the opposition.

"Do you remember the table for six?" he told a crowd of supporters waving banners and AK Party flags. Erdoğan was referring to the alliance of six opposition parties led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) which united against Erdoğan and the AK Party in the 2023 general elections. The alliance largely disintegrated and parties went on their own way but Erdoğan said they were simply looking to "expand the front." "The CHP is engaged in a secret alliance with DEM," Erdoğan said, using the informal name of the pro-PKK Green Left Party (YSP), a successor of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). The YSP, then known as the HDP, has been a formal member of the six-party alliance of 2023 but due to its clout over the Kurdish electorate in some constituencies, it was among the "sought-after" parties for support by the opposition.

"Under the name of urban consensus, they are sharing cities and districts among themselves," Erdoğan said, in reference to YSP’s plan to not nominate candidates in favor of CHP in some constituencies. "DEM acts under the orders of those abroad," he said, referring to the leadership of the terrorist group PKK which hides out in Iraq and Syria. "As for CHP, they exploited secularism, Kemalism, ‘the reactionary threat’ for years for survival. They have no new ideas," he said. "Wielding these words, they try to carve out a place for themselves in politics. Some people, from our own party, tried it as well. They left our party and joined the table for six. They could not even win a seat in Parliament," he said. He was referring to Ali Babacan and Ahmet Davutoğlu, a former minister and former prime minister respectively, who left the AK Party and established their own parties. Konya is the hometown of Davutoğlu. "Supposedly, Anatolia would stand up for them. They could not win a seat," Erdoğan said. He was quoting a 2020 speech by Davutoğlu in Konya, who claimed he could rally Anatolia just by saying "Esselamün Aleyküm" (a Turkish iteration of the Muslim-Arabic greeting).

"We don’t oppose anyone’s nomination, running in the election. We are just worried about the state of (politicians) who could not introduce new ideas in politics, for the good of our country. We cannot understand those seeking to get votes from AK Party voters, solely because of their hostility toward the AK Party and Erdoğan," the president said.

The municipal elections are a significant test for the government and the opposition. Thirty-four political parties will vie for votes in 81 provinces.

In Konya, the AK Party won more than 70% of the vote in the 2019 municipal elections. For upcoming elections, the party nominated incumbent mayor Uğur Ibrahim Altay again. Konya differs from other metropolitan municipalities due to a large number of conservative and nationalist voters. The CHP could not garner even 1% of the vote in the province in the 2019 elections while Altay’s closest rival was the candidate of the nationalist Good Party (IP).

Almost all parties unveiled their candidates for mayor and municipal assembly seats, but the Supreme Election Board (YSK) declared the final list last week. A campaign ban will come into force on March 21.

More than 61 million people are eligible to vote, and 1 million young voters will cast their ballots for the first time in this election. More than 50% of the voters are women, while men make up 49.1% of the electorate, according to the statistics. More than 3.3 million of voters are aged 75 and above. Most of the electorate is in 30 big cities, while more than 13.5 million voters will cast their ballots in 51 other cities.

Voters in opposition-run municipalities mostly complain about the lack of municipal services, such as problems in water utilities that lead to frequent water outages and traffic issues stemming from troubles in road construction and improvement of existing roads.