The Iran War and the Capture of Opposition in Turkey

Another metropolitan mayor in Turkey was arrested this week. Municipalities are being steadily captured by the AKP government. This is not unrelated to war in Iran.

I don’t think it will end until he captures all of them. Each and every one.

He is Erdoğan. What is being captured, one by one, like a buffalo at the water’s edge, ambushed by an apex predator, are municipalities. Municipalities led by Turkey’s main opposition party, the CHP.

As of today, it is clear that the March 2024 local elections meant very little. One could call them Turkey’s first “performative” elections, staged so that the façade of a democratic contestation is maintained. Or, as we say in Turkish, dostlar alışverişte görsün seçimi.

Since then, the Erdoğan government’s use of the judiciary marks a new stage in its authoritarian trajectory. Consider the numbers.

The CHP won the March 2024 elections decisively. It secured 35 cities, including 14 metropolitan municipalities, and 337 districts. The AKP, by contrast, lost almost all of the major cities it had held, including Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir, and was left with 24 cities, 12 of them metropolitan, and 356 districts. Yet the s…