Municipal elections in Turkey: 61 million voters invited Sunday to polls

will be held on Sunday 31 March in . This showdown has a speciality, since, as announced by him, they will be the last during his presidency. The polls of the municipal elections call this Sunday 61 million voters in Turkey to elect their mayors, a vote for which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that it would be the last to be organised under his authority. Five things we need to know about this election are following. Multiple election contest Residents of the country’s major cities will elect their mayor, but also their municipal councillors, mayors of their apartments and their mukhtar, a kind of head district. In Istanbul, where voters will have to choose between 49 candidates for the mayor’s position, the ballot is 97 cm wide, according to the election committee. Constantinople, the sought-after “tropion” of sixteen million inhabitants, 30% of GDP and a springboard to power: Istanbul, which passed in 2019 into the hands of the opposition with a tough election confrontation in two acts, is “the biggest trophy of Turkish politics”, sums up Burke Esen, a politologist at the Sabadzi University in Istanbul. Turkey’s main city, which lost the capital position for Ankara in 1923, is a huge political front, of which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mayor of Istanbul in the years of 1990, benefited to forge a national political destiny. Against outgoing mayor Erem Imamoglu, the Islamo-conservative ruling AKP party lowers a mere charismatic former minister, Murat Kurum, a possible defeat of which would not blacken the image of the head of state. A vote at stake for Erdogan? According to public opinion surveys, Istanbul and Ankara are expected to remain in the hands of the Social Democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main formation of the opposition that had won the two cities five years ago. Smyrna, third city of the country and stronghold of the CHP, appears to remain outside the range of the AKP. The ruling party can also retreat to major cities in Anatolia for the benefit of a super-conservative formation (Genidin Refah), predict analysts, who pointed out less turnout at the gatherings held in the presence of the head of state – probably due to Ramadan’s fast. However, although he was remaining in the polls before the May 2023 presidential election, Erdogan had been re-elected 52.2% of the vote. The “last elections” for Erdogan? In power since 2003, first as Prime Minister and then as President since 2014, Erdogan announced in early March that these municipal elections will be the “last elections” organised under his authority, as the current constitution does not allow him to claim a new term, unless early elections are held. Observers speculate on these statements by the president, who celebrated his 70 years in late February: sincere farewell or maneuvering in order to persuade the Turks to give his party a blank cheque for the last time? The Kurdish vote The votes of the Kurds, representing about a fifth of Turkey’s 85 million inhabitants, estimated to be even more sought-after this year. In southeastern Turkey where Kurds are the majority, the pro-Kurdish Party of the Equality of Peoples and Democracy (DEM, former HDP), third power in parliament, is expected to win numerous cities, despite the expected penetration of Huda Par, a Kurdish party of the far right. Elsewhere in the country, an important part of the Kurdish voters can vote for the CHP to create a dam in the AKP, according to polls. In addition, the recall of numerous pro-court mayors, who had been elected in 2019 and replaced by power-appointed governors, risks preventing voters from participating in the vote, pointing out observers.