Istanbul's mayor, Erdogan's worst nightmare

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is waging a campaign of intimidation and hatred against Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, which, paradoxically, has propelled him as the perfect candidate to take on Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the 2023 presidential elections. According to polls, if the two were to face off, Imamoglu would beat Erdogan by 48.7 % to 36.6 %.

In 1994, Turkey's secular establishment was shocked when a young Islamist militant won the municipal elections in the country's largest city, Istanbul. "Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey", the current Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan used to say. History would prove him right.

Erdogan's municipal mandate came to an end in 1997, after he recited a pro-Islamist poem: "Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers", which earned him a 10-month prison sentence for "inciting religious hatred"; a sentence he served. In 2002, his Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a landslide victory in the parliamentary elections.

Since then, Erdogan has been unchallenged, first as prime minister and since 2014 as president. Observers agree that his carefully manufactured image as the victim of a secular authoritarian regime helped him win election after election. "People saw him as the guy from the other side of the tracks whom the system punished unfairly," writes Soner Cagaptay, author of Erdogan's Empire.

Interestingly, the man who has become Erdogan's worst nightmare is following a similar course. March 2019: municipal elections were coming thick and fast to an Istanbul in Islamist hands - along with the country's capital, Ankara - since 1994. The Edoganist candidate was the high-profile former prime minister Binali Yildirim. The opposition - which included democrats, liberals, some nationalists and Kurds - united behind Ekrem İmamoglu, then a little-known district mayor.

During the election campaign, Erdogan's party cadres and trolls turned to smearing Imamoglu. One AKP leader spoke of the 'numerous questions' he said hung over the opposition candidate's ethno-religious affiliation, urging him to demonstrate that his 'spirit, heart and mind are with the Turkish nation'. The propaganda machine began to spread that Imamoglu was a crypto-Greek and that his supporters were Greeks disguised as Muslims. He was also accused of having links to Kurdish terrorists.

The 31 March vote turned out to be a political fiasco for Erdogan and his seemingly invincible AKP: Imamoglu won by a narrow margin of 13,000 votes (in a city of 18 million people). The AKP-controlled election board ordered a new vote to be held on 23 June. Imamoglu then won by 800,000 votes, sending Erdogan and his gigantic party machine into a stupor.

Only two years earlier, Erdogan had said: "If we lose Istanbul, we lose Turkey". Since the restoration of democracy (1983) following the military coup of 1980, no candidate had won such a majority in Istanbul: Imamoglu won 54% of the vote, compared to 45% for the AKP candidate and 25% for Erdogan in 1994.

The outcome of the Istanbul municipal elections triggered a campaign of hatred and intimidation against Imamoglu that, paradoxically, made him Erdogan's perfect challenger for the next presidential election next year.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Erdogan launched a nationwide campaign for businesses and wealthy Turks to help the poor. In other words: the Ankara government wanted to raise money from the people to help the people. How surprising that a shameful $245 million was raised, in a country of 83 million people; and most of it came from government-controlled companies.

In parallel to Erdogan's campaign, Imamoglu and the mayor of Ankara, Mansur Yavas, launched another to help the poor in the country's two largest cities. But there was a problem. The government said the law said municipalities had to obtain permission from the interior ministry to undertake fundraising initiatives. Imamoglu and Yavas argued that other government-controlled municipalities were also collecting donations to help workers and small traders who had lost their income as a result of the coronavirus. Yes, said the government: they got their permits and Istanbul and Ankara did not. Erdogan apparently did not want opposition mayors to gain popularity by helping the poor.

In 2020, state-controlled Vakifbank froze the Istanbul municipality's account after coronavirus donations reached $130 million. The Interior Ministry opened a criminal investigation against the two mayors for illegal financing. "Pathetic," was all Imamoglu had to say on the matter. In a subsequent fit of rage, the Ankara government also suspended an Istanbul initiative to sell cheap bread to the poorest.

Last year, in a truly grotesque episode, the Interior Ministry opened an investigation against Imamoglu for "disrespecting the tomb of Mehmet II", the Ottoman sultan who conquered Istanbul in 1453. The mayor was summoned to testify. What was the offence? Apparently that on a visit to the mausoleum in 2020 he was seen with his hands behind his back! The proof? A photo showing Imamoglu in this way. "In my opinion, this is an offence," said interior minister Suleyman Soylu. "I feel very ashamed for the minister," Imamoglu replied.

Be that as it may, the Interior is once again in the fight to get Imamoglu out of the way. On 27 December, it opened an investigation into hundreds of Istanbul City Hall employees for alleged links to terrorist organisations.The investigation is targeting 455 people working in the mayor's office or municipal companies for their alleged links to Kurdish militants, and another hundred or so for their alleged links to outlawed leftist and other groups.

The mayor's office has protested on the grounds that none of its employees have criminal records, according to data provided by the Ministry of Justice. Yes, the Interior admits, that is true. But, it insists, the "terrorists" are individuals under investigation. Turkey has become more grotesque than a caricature: doesn't the Interior recognise that every defendant is innocent until proven guilty? It seems that the "terrorists" the minister is talking about are people who are being investigated for their links to illegal organisations but who have not been charged, let alone convicted, in a court of law.

This kind of browbeating only further victimises Imamoglu in the eyes of voters and will bolster his popularity, just as Erdogan's ratings are plummeting.

A Metropoll Research poll leaves the president's approval rating at 38.6 per cent, the lowest since 2015 and below that of three of the president's own potential rivals in the election. A poll by the Sosyo Politik Field Research Center put support for Erdogan's AKP at 27%, down from 37% in the 2018 legislative elections. The AKP's nationalist ally, the MHP, is at 6.3 %, down one point from what it got in 2018. The latest Metropoll research gives the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara a comfortable lead over Erdogan ahead of the presidential election. In an Imamoglu-Erdogan duel, the former would beat the latter by 48.7 % to 36.6 %.

It is too early to conclude that there will be a historic turnaround in Turkish politics in 2023. But the reports are real, as are Erdogan's fears and his government's growing recklessness.