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by Burak Bekdil
• June 24, 2019
at 3:00 am
- The invincible
Erdoğan took a great risk: a second loss for the man who
thinks "whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey" would
mean just more than just an embarrassing mayoral loss.
Comparatively speaking, the difference in votes between
Imamoğlu and Erdoğan's candidate, Yıldırım, widened within
less than two months from 13,000 to nearly 800,000.
- "It appears
that losing Istanbul entails too many risks for the AKP for
the matter to be left to its own resources. Many are convinced
that if the AKP were to lose Istanbul to the opposition, after
having held it – with its precursor – for 25 years, a hornet's
nest of vested interests, corruption, and abuse of power would
be revealed." -- Semih Idiz, a columnist for Sigma
Turkey, an Ankara-based think tank.
- The more the masses
start feeling the economic pressure, the more Erdoğan's
popularity will sink.
Crowds
celebrating Ekrem Imamoglu's second victory. Who would have guessed
that what a 13-year-old opposition youth's shout at Imamoğlu's
election bus would become the slogan of hope for tens of millions
of Turks: Erkem! Everything is coming up roses..." Photo:
Getty Images.
A political Islamist party that comes to power by
popular vote would never leave power by popular vote. That
suggestion is overwhelmingly accurate. But not always. Any Turks
younger than 18 has never seen an election defeat for (former prime
minister) President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On June 23 a little-known
small district mayor won Istanbul for the first time since
Islamists first won Istanbul's mayorship in 1994 – a good quarter
of a century.
In fact, that was the second time Ekrem Imamoğlu won
Istanbul in less than two months. "Who wins Istanbul wins
Turkey," has been Erdoğan's dictum since 1994, when he won mayoral
elections in Turkey's biggest city (home to nearly 15% of Turkey's
57 million voters and accounting for 31% of its GDP).
The headline on the Istanbul election, on May 27,
was "Erdoğan's Istanbul Nightmare."
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