TheEconomistJune 29th 2019 271C
ars streameddown the main avenues
of Turkey’s biggest city on the night of
June 23rd, music and horns blaring. Street
parties erupted in several neighbourhoods.
Young people danced into the small hours.
Ekrem Imamoglu, the man responsible for
the commotion, stood atop a double-
decker bus near his home, surrounded by a
sea of elated supporters, and spoke the
words that had become the rallying cry of
his campaign. “Everything”, he said, “is go-
ing to be great.”
Hours earlier Mr Imamoglu had coasted
to victory in the re-run of the election for
Istanbul mayor, defeating his opponent, a
former prime minister, by nine points, and
handing Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, the biggest setback of his career.
It was the best showing by any opposition
politician in decades, and left no room for
the kind of stunt Mr Erdogan pulled to rob
the new mayor of his first victory.
Three months ago, after Mr Imamoglu
prevailed by a fraction of a percentage
point, Mr Erdogan and the ruling Justice
and Development (ak) party accused the
opposition of stealing the vote and leanedon the country’s election board to order a
re-run. The move backfired spectacularly.
In the re-run, Mr Imamoglu received 54%
of the vote against 45% for ak’s candidate,
increasing his margin of victory from
13,000 to over 800,000 votes. Turnout
reached 85%, boosted by thousands of peo-
ple who cancelled or interrupted their holi-
days to be home on election day.
Mr Imamoglu forged a coalition that in-
cluded his secular Republican People’s
Party (chp), Kurdish voters, a breakaway
nationalist group and some Islamists. But
he also earned the sympathy of conserva-
tives disenchanted with the ruling party
and the state of the economy. A street ven-dor in Mr Erdogan’s old neighbourhood
said he was so appalled by the decision to
re-run the election that he turned against
ak. “What they did to Imamoglu was an in-
justice,” he said. “There’s been too much
corruption,” another former akvoter said.
“They made too many mistakes.”
One was to resort to the scaremonger-
ing Mr Erdogan uses to fire up his religious
base. Over the years, Turkey’s leader has
convinced millions of pious voters that
their fate depends on his, and that they will
become second-class citizens as soon as he
loses power. He has attacked the opposi-
tion as terrorists, foreign lackeys and athe-
ists. Most recently, he compared Mr Ima-
moglu to Egypt’s dictator, Abdel-Fattah
al-Sisi. At a rare briefing with foreign jour-
nalists ahead of the re-run, he brought up
the recent death of Muhammad Morsi, the
ousted Egyptian leader, and compared it to
the execution of a Turkish prime minister
five decades ago, for which he blames the
chp. “Don’t look for anything democratic
in the chp’s mindset,” he said. “They don’t
have that in their history.”
Some hostility to religious conserva-
tives survives in the chp’s dna, but the
party has evolved over the past decade. In
Mr Imamoglu, it has found a figure who
can embrace all segments of Turkish soci-
ety and expose Mr Erdogan’s narrative as a
sham. The bespectacled mayor reads the
Koran, fasts during Ramadan, and has the
looks and demeanour of an overgrown
schoolboy. He does not look like a threat to
national security or Islamic values.Tu r ke yMaking him stronger
ISTANBUL
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