Upcoming Local Elections in Turkey: Erdogan Not Favored

• 03.26.2019, 10:40
•  Region,  World

The Turkish local elections of 2019 will be held on Sunday 31 March 2019 throughout the 81 provinces of Turkey. General and presidential elections were held throughout Turkey on 24 June 2018. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was reelected as president for the second round with 52,6 % of votes. This victory enabled Erdogan to rule Turkey till 2023. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) received 42,5% of votes thus ensuring 293 mandates out of 600 parliament seats.

• The process of local elections had officially kicked off on January 1, 2019 with 12 political parties registered among them the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the key opposition party, Republican People's Party (CHP), Nationalist Movement party (MHP), newly founded “Good Party”, (İyi Parti), HDP (Peoples' Democratic Party), “Felicity Party, (SP), “Left Democrat Party” (DSP) and so on.

According to the polls trust essentially declined towards the Justice and Development Party. According to “Eurasia” research center AKP has loosened ties with the society, which means turning voters to Nationalist Movement party and Republican People's Party.

Polls results as follows:

It should be noted though that in such non-democratic countries as turkey polls findings do not always election results. The reasons are many, among them violations during elections and state resources misuses.

To recap, in 2014 on the eve of the elections “Ekşi Sözlük” polls showed that AKP, could get about 47% of votes, HDP 34%, and MHP around 10%. In fact AKP got 45.60%,  տոկոս, HDP 27.80% and MHP 15.20%.

However, given the essential democracy regress in Turkey, substantially differing results from 2014 local elections could be expected.

It should also be noted that Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are the biggest Turkish cities and victory in those cities will considerably affect local elections.

Besides population in remote areas in Turkey also plays a big role in the elections in favor of the authorities. It also accounts for their conservative views. Given that Erdogan considers himself a moderate follower of Islam and moderate follower of conservativism his chances of getting big number of votes in those territories and he actively works in that direction.

In spite of the predictions and low indices of the AKP Erdogan will do his best to achieve the desired results and it is not ruled out that he will preserve his positions particularly relying on the remote Turkish population.