Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, mayoral candidate of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), greets his supporters following the early results in front of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) in Istanbul, Turkey on April 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Ekrem Imamoglu’s second convincing victory in an Istanbul city election looks set to propel him into the running for the 2028 presidential vote.

The football-loving 52-year-old, who first became the mega-city’s mayor in 2019, on Sunday again defeated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chosen candidate in the country’s economic powerhouse despite a concerted effort to unseat him by the veteran president.

“Tomorrow is a new spring day for our country,” Mr. Imamoglu told tens of thousands of euphoric supporters cheering his re-election late on Sunday, wearing his trademark shirtsleeves and rimless glasses.

Mr. Imamoglu, candidate for the social-democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP), had spent much of the campaign targeting Mr. Erdogan rather than his nominal opponent, former Environment Minister Murat Kurum.

Largely unknown in 2019, Mr. Imamoglu that year ended 25 years of rule by Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its allies in the city of 16 million where the president was once mayor.

The smooth talking Imamoglu was initially stripped of his victory when the vote was controversially annulled. But he won by an even bigger margin in a re-run three months later.

He has since become one of Turkiye’s most popular politicians, even as he was targeted with legal action.

An Istanbul court ruled in late 2022 that Mr. Imamoglu had defamed city election officials by calling them “idiots”, sentencing him to nearly three years in jail.

It barred him from politics for the duration of the sentence.

Mr. Imamoglu has appealed, meaning that he has continued to serve as mayor while putting his fate in the hands of judges whose impartially he questioned.

Turkey ‘doesn’t deserve poverty’

In Sunday’s election, Mr. Imamoglu ran as the CHP candidate as he failed to get Turkiye’s fractured opposition parties to rally around his bid.

The size of his victory will also have stunned those erstwhile allies.

A practising Muslim leading a secular outfit, the former businessman can draw support from a wide spectrum of voters.

“He can attract all segments of the opposition electorate, whether it’s Turkish or Kurdish, Sunni or Alevi, young or old,” said Berk Esen, a political scientist at Istanbul’s Sabanci university.

Mr. Imamoglu’s original 2019 win came in an anti-Erdogan wave propelling the opposition into power in Turkey’s major cities — including the capital, Ankara.

A new generation of leaders from the staunchly secular CHP, including Mr. Imamoglu in Istanbul and Mansur Yavas in Ankara, offered a clear alternative to Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted AKP.

Some voters rebelled against sweeping purges that followed a failed putsch in 2016. Others were disillusioned by an economic crisis that has still not let up.

With inflation now above 65% and the lira currency massively devalued, Imamoglu said in January that Mr. Erdogan had “turned the rules of economics upside down”.

“This country doesn’t deserve poverty,” he added.

‘Atomic ant’

Now Mr. Imamoglu is seen as the most likely potential candidate to beat whoever stands for Erdogan’s party in the 2028 presidential election.

Some have accused him of thinking more of his own career than the job in front of him, which he denied by saying he works “like an atomic ant” in reference to a popular cartoon show.

Imamoglu has never hidden his presidential ambitions, but recently told opposition outlet Medyascope that “there are still four years until 2028. It would be unwarranted for me to talk about that today.”

As Erdogan has shown, running Istanbul with its vast population, administration and budget can be a path to national power.

Since Erdogan won a new term in last year’s presidential election, Imamoglu has challenged the leadership of his CHP, calling for change after former leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu was defeated.

“Imamoglu is an effective political operator and at this point in time represents one of the very few glimmers of hope for constituents who oppose Erdogan and the AKP,” Anthony Skinner, director of research at geopolitical advisory firm Marlow Global, told AFP.

The Istanbul mayor has crafted a media image and run viral social media campaigns, that both raised his profile and got on the nerves of many voters.

State media, meanwhile, turned him into a hate figure.

In January 2022, pro-government media were awash with images taken by surveillance cameras of him having dinner with the British ambassador at a fish restaurant.

As Istanbul battled a snowstorm, the images played into the government’s portrayal of the mayor as out-of-touch and Western-backed.

During the election, he had to contend with Erdogan taking credit for many of the important projects that have modernised Istanbul over recent years.

Turks punished President Tayyip Erdogan and his party on Sunday in nationwide local elections that reasserted the opposition as a political force and reinforced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu as the president’s chief future rival.

With more than half of votes counted, Imamoglu led by nearly 10 percentage points in the mayoral race in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, while his Republican People’s Party (CHP) retained Ankara and gained nine other mayoral seats in big cities nationwide.

Analysts said Erdogan and his AK Party (AKP) – which have ruled Turkey for more than two decades – fared worse than polls predicted due to soaring inflation, dissatisfied Islamist voters and, in Istanbul, Imamoglu’s appeal beyond the CHP’s secular base.

“The favour and trust our citizens have in us have indeed been demonstrated,” said Imamoglu, 53, a former businessman who entered politics in 2008 and is now seen by analsyts as a potential presidential challenger.

In Ankara, the capital, thousands of supporters gathered into the night waving CHP flags for a speech by CHP Mayor Mansur Yavas, who trounced his AKP challenger in another blow for Erdogan.

Erdogan had campaigned hard ahead of the municipal elections, which analysts described as a gauge of both his support and the opposition’s durability. The president’s disappointing showing could signal a change in the major emerging economy’s divided political landscape.

Hours after voting ended, the president was headed to Ankara from Istanbul to address the nation.

According to 79.77% of ballot boxes opened in Istanbul, Europe’s largest city with more than 16 million people, Imamoglu had 50.53% support compared with 40.73% for AKP challenger Murat Kurum, a former minister in Erdogan’s national government.

Polls had predicted a tight contest in Istanbul and possible CHP losses across the country.

Yet partial official results reported by state-run Anadolu Agency showed AKP and its main ally giving up mayoralties in 10 big cities including Bursa and Balikesir in the industrialised northwest.

The CHP is leading nationwide by almost 1% of the votes, a first in 35 years, the results showed.

Mert Arslanalp, assistant professor of political science at Istanbul’s Bogazici University, said it was Erdogan’s “severest election defeat” since coming to national power in 2002.

“Imamoglu demonstrated he could reach across the deep socio-political divisions that define Turkey’s opposition electorate even without their institutional support,” he said. “This makes him the most politically competitive rival to Erdogan’s regime at the national level.”

IMAMOGLU’S RISE

In 2019, Imamoglu had dealt Erdogan a sharp electoral blow when he first won Istanbul, ending 25 years of rule in the city by AKP and its Islamist predecessors, including Erdogan’s own run as its mayor in the 1990s. CHP also won Ankara that year.

The president struck back in 2023 by securing re-election and a parliamentary majority with his nationalist allies, despite a years-long cost-of-living crisis.

Analysts said the economic strains, including nearly 70% inflation and a slowdown in growth brought on by an aggressive monetary-tightening regime, moved voters to punish AKP this time.

“The economy was the decisive factor,” said Hakan Akbas, a senior adviser at the Albright Stonebridge Group. “Turkish people demanded change and Imamoglu is now the default nemesis to President Erdogan.”

Flag-waving supporters in front of the Istanbul Municipality building said they wanted to see Imamoglu challenge Erdogan for the presidency in the future.

“We are very happy. I love him so much. We would like to see him as president,” said Esra, a housewife.

Rising popular support for the Islamist New Welfare Party, which took an even more hardline stance than Erdogan against Israel over the Gaza conflict, also sapped AKP support. The party took Sanliurfa from an AKP incumbant in the southeast.

Imamoglu was reelected despite the collapse of the opposition alliance that failed to topple Erdogan last year.

The main pro-Kurdish party, which backed Imamoglu in 2019, fielded its own candidate under the DEM banner in Istanbul this time. But many Kurds put aside party loyalty and voted for him again, the results suggest.

In the mainly Kurdish southeast, DEM reaffirmed its strength, winning 10 provinces. Following previous elections, the state has replaced pro-Kurdish mayors with state-appointed “trustees” following previous elections over alleged militant ties.

Violence erupted earlier in the day, including one incident in the southeast in clashes by groups armed with guns, sticks and stones, killing one and wounding 11. In another, one neighbourhood official, or “muhtar”, candidate was killed and four people were wounded in a fight, Anadolu reported.

Several others were hurt in other incidents while one person was shot dead and two were wounded overnight ahead of the vote in Bursa, Demiroren reported.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)