Notes regarding local elections
Turkey left behind yet another election. The opposition, which could not attain expected success and succumbed to hopelessness, even despair, in parliamentary and presidential elections 10 months before, this time ,especially CHP, achieved an unexpected victory across Turkey and went over the moon. This is Turkey ; it is not easy to deal with, it can make one manic depressive.
Setting aside joking, the most conspicuous result of this recent election is the rise of CHP votes and the decline of AKP votes compared to general elections on 14 May 2023. Let’s demonstrate this by giving some numbers, but let’s underscore that one should be cautious while comparing the votes taken in parliamentary elections with local elections as candidates for mayorship are more influential in boosting or reducing party votes than MP candidates. Therefore, using vote rates of provincial general council instead of mayor candidates is much more beneficial when comparing these results to results of parliamentary elections. Thus, I will take the number of votes for political parties in provincial council elections into consideration in this comparison, and I will address only votes within the country in relation to general elections to ensure expressiveness.
There are two matters that must be underlined before the vote rates of parties: One of these is the drop in participation. While this rate was %90 in the May 2023 elections, it became approximately %78,5 ; this is not a decrease that can be ignored. The number of people who did not go ballot box was increased by 11 out of 100 people compared to the last elections. When we ponder another datum, I want to attract attention to, namely the rise in invalid ballots, the situation becomes more meaningful. While the number of invalid votes was 1.365.867 in the May 2023 elections, it rose to 2.210.016 in this election. This means a rise from %2,52 to %4,57. In other words, an increase of about 844.000 invalid votes is the point. If the people of Turkey have not become more clumsy since May 2023, there must be reason for this increase. Even this is a slight increase compared to volume of the whole electorate, I think this rise is too much to be a coincidence.
Because of the complexity of the voting system in provincial elections, more people can be puzzled and the number of people who unintentionally cast invalid votes is increased ; this is a possibility. Another possibility is a certain electorate group casting invalid votes to protest. When we consider this together with people who did not vote and decline in the vote rates of AKP, the possibility of those protesters being AKP supporters is higher.
Alright, how much has the vote rate of AKP decreased? AKP took 18.586.137 votes corresponding to %35,32 in the May 2023 elections. Looking at the votes in provincial council elections held on Sunday, we can observe a decrease of 3.735.639 in votes (it is equal to %2,9). On the other hand, CHP raised its votes from 13.374.463 to 15.791.97, which corresponds to approximately a rise of %9,5 . This is a groundbreaking rise for a period of ten months in consideration. Then, what has changed in the last months that led to this drastic change of vote rates? Even though it is hard to elucidate this change by a sole factor, economic problems and poverty stand out. It is quite normal that bad straits of the public plays a determinant role in this election like in any other election. However, defendants of this opinion imply that economic hardship of people was not so dire to make AKP’s vote drop ten months before but have worsened so much since then Indeed, we talked with Utku Balaban after the May 2023 elections that, contrary of assumptions, AKP’s economic policies, which can be summarized as low interest-high employment, are beneficial to consolidate its electorate base, . What has changed in the last 10 months and its outcomes should be scrutinized now to put forward a meaningful explanation.
Another party, besides CHP, which drastically raised its vote rates is the Yeniden Rafah Party led by Erbakan the son. It raised its vote rate from %2,86 which corresponds to 1.505.736 in last year’s election to %6,96 which is equal to 3.190.511 in this recent election; in brief, it increased its rates by more than double. It is not difficult to imagine that a portion of the voters that left AKP ended up in YRP. ( It is another question why these votes went to YRP instead of Saadet (Felicity) Party which had seemed more active before elections.) However, the intriguing part is that YRP could not boost its votes in Istanbul. Even, its votes in Istanbul have decreased by approximately 110.000 and 8.000 on the basis of votes given to candidates and city council, respectively. In other words, rise of YRP is stemming from Anatolia. Furthermore, one should underline that the number of YRP’s mayoral candidate’s vote number in Istanbul is 100.000 less than the number of YRP’s provincial council’s vote number. In other words, some voters who voted for YRP for city council seats cast vote for another candidate instead of YRP’s in the Istanbul municipality elections. Whom do you think they cast their votes for?
Results can be discussed more, but the last thing I want to note in this article is DEM Party’s choice to put forward its own candidates in Istanbul municipality election. Election results have indicated that DEM Party’s choice to put forward candidates is not a strategically right decision. As a result of inability to comprehend base’s predispositions, a vote rate that shows the party much less powerful in Istanbul that it actually is has emerged. If Basak Demirtas had been put forward as a candidate, would this result have changed? Possible answers towards this question, including mine in the following lines, can neither be confirmed nor be falsified. In my opinion, DEM Party’s electorate’s ability to interpret macro policy is so developed that even Basak Demirtas’s candidacy would not bring about a dramatic change. If CHP takes the votes that came from DEM Party electorate in this election granted for the next election, too then it would make a miscalculation.
(Translation: Deniz Kaya)
