Ekrem İmamoğlu: Erdoğan is no longer without alternatives

Read the Turkish original here. The text has been slightly adapted for the German version. / Köşe yazısının editors edilmiş Almanca versiyonu in tıklayınız.

His name is Ekrem İmamoğlu and as his surname – ‘Son of the Imam’ – suggests, he comes from a conservative family. In the 1980s, his father headed the regional branch of a right-wing party on the Black Sea. Born in 1971, Ekrem took a Quranic course before going to school. His grandfather, on the other hand, a veteran of the Turkish Liberation War, taught him to love the republic. So he grew up, nourished by the two main veins that run in the bloodstream
Turkiye have been in conflict with each other for 100 years. His ability to appeal to people of all backgrounds in the deeply polarized country is probably the main reason why he is considered Turkey’s future head of state.

When İmamoğlu was chosen as mayoral candidate by the social democratic CHP at the end of 2018
Istanbul When it was founded, it was largely unknown. Although he was able to demonstrate success as Istanbul’s district mayor, almost no one believed he could bring back the metropolis that has been ruled by Islamists since Erdoğan was elected mayor in 1994. He took on the last AKP Prime Minister.

İmamoğlu’s advisors carefully planned his election campaign. Above all, he should not address Erdoğan directly or engage in polemics under any circumstances. He should not appear with his party’s badge, but as a young star. Photos of him with his mother in a headscarf should be published, as should those with his modern wife. His rival was the ‘old’ Prime Minister, while he was the ‘new’ face of politics. The frustration with the party that had been in government in the city for almost 25 years was intended to benefit him. In the street campaign he won the sympathy of conservative voters with words such as: ‘Pray for me, that is more important to me than your vote.’ He also seemed friendly towards the Kurdish electorate. He narrowly won the election with 4,169,000 votes to 4,156,000.

Erdoğan, who started his political career as mayor of Istanbul and from there rose to become president, recognized the danger and in his panic made a serious mistake: he put pressure on the Supreme Electoral Council, which was loyal to him, and canceled the election. He hoped that his candidate would catch up and emerge victorious in the new elections. But the opposite happened. During a mass meeting, İmamoğlu took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and shouted, “I am young and enthusiastic and I will not give up!” The population seemed to have been waiting for such determination. When a student shouted in the wake of the campaign bus, “Everything will be very good!”, İmamoğlu turned this hope into his slogan, and the disappointed population stuck to it. He won re-election by a whopping 800,000 votes and took over the mayor’s post as the politician who had managed to defeat the AKP twice in a row.

İmamoğlu achieved his third victory on March 31, when he won again against the AKP in the local elections. While Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the former CHP chairman and 2023 opposition leader, left office after losing all the elections in which he ran against Erdoğan, İmamoğlu emerged as the new star of the opposition. Erdoğan, in turn, tried to have İmamoğlu sentenced to prison and banned from politics because of a speech. But this attempt also failed. Thanks to his ability to appeal to wide circles, his statesmanlike reception of EU ambassadors and his focus on media effectiveness, İmamoğlu continued to gain popularity among voters. It was seen as an important message from the West that Federal President Steinmeier met İmamoğlu ahead of Erdoğan during his most recent trip to Turkey and had his picture taken with him.

Currently, many in Turkey and the West see İmamoğlu as Erdoğan’s challenger in the next presidential elections, and even as his successor. It is carefully noted that, like Erdoğan, he comes from the Black Sea, played football as a high school student and also challenged the great old political figures at the beginning of his career, and that he appears moderate towards everyone, especially the West. However, some fear that his meteoric rise and strong self-confidence could make him a “new Erdoğan”. However, the majority clearly sees him as a political leader capable of compensating for the decline Erdoğan has caused in his more than two decades in power and reconciling the mutually hating factions of the divided society. If İmamoğlu visits Berlin soon as planned, it should reinforce this impression. In the last elections, Erdoğan already lost his image of invincibility, and with İmamoğlu he now also loses the advantage of having “no alternative”.

Translated from Turkish by Sabine Adatepe