Opposition sees light at the end of tunnel

While percentages prove who won Sunday’s local elections, analyzing the numbers paints a new political map for Turkey where the election losers might become long-term winners.

Republican People’s Party, or CHP, candidate for Istanbul mayor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu increased his party’s votes in the city by 10 percent, creating a credible challenge to Justice and Development Party, or AKP’s, Kadir Topbaş, who won by eight points, 44.27 percent to Kılıçdaroğlu’s 36.88 percent.

CHP’s victories in Antalya and İzmir were also notable. In Antalya, the party ran with Mustafa Akaydın, the former rector of Akdeniz University who was removed from the position by President Abdullah Gül last year. Running against AKP’s incumbent, Menderes Türel, Akaydın received 40.79 to Türel’s 35.02 percent, surprising many including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who was left wondering how he lost.

In İzmir, the AKP failed to win a single mayoral post, with 29 of the 30 district mayoral posts going to the CHP and one going to the Democrat Party, or DP.

Despite significant campaigning, the AKP failed to trim İzmir’s support for the CHP, the Metropolitan Municipality Mayoral office going to incumbent Aziz Kocaoğlu.

The rising stars of the opposition CHP, Kılıçdaroğlu, Kocaoğlu and Akaydın are seen as the future leaders of the party.

The party leader, Deniz Baykal, usually concerned over any challenge to his leadership, is relaxed and has told reporters that there is no leadership issue in the party.

CHP’s Özlem Çerçioğlu meanwhile became one of only two female provincial mayors by winning over from the AKP the normally conservative Aydın on the Aegean coast.

Another opposition party that cemented its support with popular mayors was the Democrat Left Party, or DSP, which ran in Istanbul’s Şişli district with Mustafa Sarıgül.

Sarıgül won his third term in the post in style, receiving 54.65 percent of the votes cast in the area.

Another victorious DSP mayor was Eskişehir’s Yılmaz Büyükerşen who received 51.46 percent of the votes in the central Anatolian province.

The conservative Saadet (Felicity) Party returned into contention under its new leader Numan Kurtulmus by doubling the party’s votes to 5.17 percent.

While Kurtulmuş is credited with the rise in Saadet’s popularity, there is still a long road ahead for it to challenge the ruling party among the conservative electorate. One minister who can return to Ankara with pride is Infrastructure Minister Faruk Nafiz Özak, who played a serious part in winning Trabzon province from the CHP.

Kadir Topbaş, the AKP’s Istanbul mayoral candidate, also received appraise for his victory over Kılıçdaroğlu and offered his thanks to all the people of Istanbul. Far-right Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, increased its level of support from 14.3 percent in the 2007 general elections to 16.1 percent in Sunday’s elections. The most notable MHP win was in Adana where Aytaç Durak, the incumbent mayor who moved to MHP from the AKP before the elections, beat serious competition from the AKP and the CHP.

Southeast goes to DTP

The competition between the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP, and the AKP in the southeast of the country was expected to be very close, especially after the government’s recent initiatives on the Kurdish issue, which included the launch of the Kurdish language channel TRT 6, efforts to establish better relations with the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq and the promised economic initiatives linked to the Southeast Anatolia Project.

The AKP efforts to win in Diyarbakır, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan personally complaining about municipal services on a visit there, came to naught when DTP’s incumbent mayor, Osman Baydemir won convincingly. The DTP candidates increased their number of provincial mayoral posts from four to eight and their number of municipal mayoral posts from 32 to 51. The margin by which the DTP candidates won was notable. In Hakkari, DTP’s incumbent Mayor Fadıl Bedirhanoğlu returned with a 78.97 percent support, the highest support of any provincial mayor.