One down, two more to go: electoral trends in the aftermath of the March 2014 municipality elections.

• Author: Carkoglu, Ali
• Position: Essay

Introduction

Elections are routinely seen as turning points in Turkey. The March 30, 2014 municipal elections were no different. All parties and civil society groups viewed these elections as turning points prior to and in the aftermath of the elections. However, few real turning points exist in Turkish electoral history. Nevertheless, a number of remarkable developments and new trends could be deduced from the results of the recent local elections.

The mining accident that took place a few weeks after the local elections, which killed 301 people and outraged the masses, may have shown the opposition that they missed an important opportunity in these elections. The influence of the living conditions of the working class and the condition of the Turkish economy on mass preferences provided some opportunity for the opposition to score highly in the elections. However, the opposition failed to capitalize on this issue and instead relied on highly polarizing issues that helped the incumbent government stay largely unaffected on an electoral basis.

Two events shaped the nature of electoral debate in the March 2014 local elections, the first of which was the Gezi Park protests that occurred about ten months prior to the local elections in May-June 2013. An isolated neighborhood protest in central Istanbul quickly turned into a massive protest movement involving millions of people all over the country. (1) The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi-AK Party) leadership was quick to realize the impending threat of these protests for the approaching local elections. The non-accommodating reaction of the AK Party inevitably divided and polarized the electorate. As such, the AK Party's and the opposition's mass support bases were consolidated and frozen, leading to very minimal electoral shifts on the basis of this issue.

The second event came in December 2013 with graft allegations against important cabinet members of the AK Party government. This graft scandal resulted in a cabinet reshuffle within a couple of days, effectively ousting the ministers accused of corruption. In the weeks that followed, eight AK Party MPs left the party over the row. Istanbul Deputy Muhammed Cetin summed up the developments by saying that "with these corruption scandals the AK Party has turned black," warning that there was unrest within the ranks of the party, which, at the time, was expected to lead to further resignations. The inner-party unrest and resignations remained under control during the election campaign period and did not occur to any significant degree due to the election results. (2) In other words, the potential impact of the graft allegations did not materialize on the electoral front and hence the AK Party leadership was again able to consolidate its grasp over the rank and file of the party. As such, Prime Minister (PM) Recep Tayyip Erdogan's impending bid for the presidency was left without a popular or elite opposition within the party.

Without going into the details of the factors that set the context of these elections, I would like to underline a few of the results that came out of these elections and focus on their implications for the future presidential and general elections.

Results of the March 30, 2014 Elections

In evaluating the March 2014 local election results, it is important to keep the inherent data issues in mind when comparing these results with earlier election outcomes. The primary data problem arises because both the number and the constituency borders of Greater City Municipalities (GCMs) were changed in 2012.3 The election constituency borders of the GCMs were enlarged from urban municipal borders to include the totality of provincial borders and those in rural areas. Hence, rural inhabitants within the already existing 16 and 14 newly established GCMs were able to vote for the mayoral elections. As such, any comparison of the March 30th vote with earlier election results in these 30 provinces becomes problematic. Although the metropolitan and district mayors are elected directly via a plurality system, the metropolitan assembly is not elected, but composed of representatives of district assemblies. Those who live in a GCM vote for GCM mayoral candidates, their district mayors and district assembly representatives from political parties and cast their vote for their village or neighborhood headman (muhtar). If...