Where does Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu get his popularity from?

There are only about ten days remaining before the local elections in Turkiye and the candidates are making their final campaign efforts to convince hesitant voters to vote for them on 31 March. Istanbul is expected to witness the fiercest democratic competition in the city’s election. The full attention of observers of Turkish affairs will turn to the person who will run the municipality over the next five years.

Geologists and seismologists warn that a devastating earthquake may hit Istanbul at any moment, and so the government and local authorities must take all possible precautions in the city in order to reduce material and human losses. Urban development projects to demolish old, dilapidated buildings and build earthquake-resistant replacements are at the top of the priority list.

The incumbent mayor of Istanbul and Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, pledged during his election campaign five years ago that he would prepare the city to face the threat of earthquakes within his term of office; now he says that the problem could not be solved within that period. At the time of his candidacy in 2019, he promised to build 100,000 new residential apartments as part of urban transformation projects, but he has built fewer than 6,000.

In response to a TV presenter’s questions, Imamoglu said more than once recently that he “does not recall” all of the promises he made five years ago, but they are on record on both video and audio.

He can’t, of course, just be frank and admit that he has not kept his promises.

This scenario was repeated in an interview with another journalist, reflecting how panicky the CHP candidate is when faced with the bare facts which expose that he has barely accomplished any of what he promised to do over the past five years.

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The competition in Istanbul will be between the Justice and Freedom Party (AK Party) candidate, Murat Kurum, and Imamoglu. In theory, Kurum is superior to Imamoglu in terms of his qualifications, experience and credibility, and given the fact that the latter failed to serve Istanbul adequately during his time as mayor. However, opinion polls indicate that the two are neck and neck in the opinion polls. This prompts the obvious question: Where does Imamoglu get his popularity — and votes — from?

Well, for a start, he belongs to the CHP and most of this party’s supporters vote for its candidate for ideological reasons, no matter how unsuccessful and unqualified they are to be mayor of such a major city as Istanbul. Although CHP supporters mock religious-minded voters, describing them as “sheep” and accusing them of voting blindly for conservative candidates, they themselves vote for CHP candidates in the same fashion, even if the candidate is hopeless. They admit this.

Moreover, Imamoglu is counting in the upcoming election on Kurdish voters loyal to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). There is a candidate from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) running for mayor, but the party has formed an alliance with the CHP in some cities, most notably Istanbul. According to this “city alliance”, Imamoglu gets DEM support in exchange for the DEM nominating someone close to it as local mayor of the Esenyurt district in the city, as well as nominating others loyal to it to be members of the municipal councils on the CHP lists. The DEM candidate for mayor of Istanbul, Meral Danis Bestas, is campaigning as if she works for Imamoglu.

Since becoming mayor of Istanbul, Imamoglu has allocated a huge budget to advertising and self-promotion in traditional and social media. There is also talk in political and media circles about his success in bringing down the former head of the CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, and enabling Ozgur Ozel to win the presidency of the party, by buying off a number of members who are entitled to vote to elect the party president.

Some parties, such as the Good Party and the New Welfare Party, have candidates running in the local elections within Istanbul who also serve Imamoglu’s cause, because supporters of those parties may vote for the AKP candidate if there are no candidates running on behalf of their own parties. Some religious groups also support the incumbent mayor of the city, such as the Fethullah Gulen movement, the Yeni Asya movement affiliated with the Nursi groups, and the Suleymancilar group.

Imamoglu is also backed by the Istanbul bourgeoisie, Western media and European embassies. Moreover, some voters who themselves or whose parents moved from the Black Sea regions to Istanbul may vote for him based on regional affiliations, as Imamoglu was born in the Trabzon province. In addition, there is a percentage of voters who are expected to vote for him simply to spite the AK Party, due to their frustration with the performance and decisions of the Turkish government run by the party led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Companies loyal to the CHP publish the results of opinion polls showing that Imamoglu is ahead of his competitor, Kurum, by a small margin. However, the opinion polls conducted by these companies lack credibility, because they showed Kilicdaroglu ahead of Erdogan by a large margin before the last presidential election. The race to be mayor of Istanbul looks like it could be very close.

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This article first appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 20 March 2024.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.