President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan owes much of his success in raising his profile in Turkish politics to a tenure in the 1990s as mayor of Istanbul. Credited with changing the grim fate of Türkiye’s most populated city, Erdoğan’s legacy remains fresh in the public mind. His ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) aspires to build on this legacy in the March 2024 municipal elections.
After he was elected prime minister, Erdoğan also spearheaded reforms for local administrations and the work of AK Party-run municipalities over the years helped the party to win seats in municipalities that have been the opposition strongholds traditionally.
Some three months after the general elections where Erdoğan was reelected as president, Türkiye is bracing for the election of mayors in 81 provinces and hundreds of districts. AK Party, which won 742 municipalities in the 2019 elections but lost the capital Ankara and Istanbul to its main rival Republican People’s Party (CHP), strives to keep its place as the party that won most mayoral seats in the 2024 vote.
Unlike the general elections, which went into a runoff for the first time in over two decades, the AK Party’s job is less challenging in convincing voters in the local elections. Their campaign focuses on simply conveying the list of failures by opposition-run municipalities to potential voters and the experience of the party in running the municipalities accumulated during the past 22 years where it dominated Turkish politics. The staff of the party, which boasts a higher number of members, started public meetings already.
In its local election campaign, the AK Party highlights how it reformed the governance of the municipalities, making them more accountable and more decentralized through a series of administrative reforms. It also highlights infrastructure projects and prioritization of disadvantaged communities in municipal works carried out by AK Party-run municipalities in the past years.
As for its candidates, the AK Party, like other parties, is still in a decision process, but they made clear their criteria for potential candidates. Along with usual merits, candidates are required to be “compatible with demographics,” that is, known to the people they will govern.
The campaign process is expected to be accelerated after an Oct. 7 congress of the party, and the party plans to launch the admission and interview process for would-be candidates.
