2024 Turkish local elections


Local elections in Turkey took place throughout the country's 81 provinces on 31 March 2024. A total of 30 metropolitan and 1,363 district municipal mayors, alongside 1,282 provincial and 21,001 municipal councilors were elected, in addition to numerous local non-partisan positions such as neighborhood representatives and elderly people's councils.
The elections took place ten months after the 2023 parliamentary and presidential elections, where the Nation Alliance opposition coalition suffered an unexpected defeat to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's governing People's Alliance. This was despite an ongoing economic crisis and rapidly rising inflation. Following the defeat, the opposition six-party coalition dissolved, with the main opposition parties Republican People's Party and Good Party fielding separate candidates for effectively all mayoral positions. This was the first nationwide election to be contested by the CHP's new leader Özgür Özel, who had successfully challenged his predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu for the position in November 2023.
The Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party, which succeeded the Peoples' Democratic Party as Turkey's principal Kurdish minority rights party, fielded its own candidates in many western metropoles, despite having previously withdrawn candidates in favor of the Nation Alliance.
The results were described as a "spectacular upset" victory for the opposition CHP, which despite the lack of any electoral pacts managed to retain all but one of its metropolitan mayoralties, while winning four more. In particular, the party's candidates in Turkey's largest city Istanbul and capital Ankara, Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, were re-elected by 51% and 60%, respectively. Both mayors also won majorities in their respective metropolitan councils, giving them significantly more powers than their previous terms, and are now seen as potential presidential contenders for the next Turkish presidential election. The CHP also won many unexpected victories in areas that had been under government control for the previous two decades, including Bursa, Balıkesir, Manisa, Kütahya, Adıyaman, Amasya, Kırıkkale, Kilis and Denizli. The party also managed to win swathes of districts within many provinces, many of which delivered vote swings of over 30% in the CHP's favor. Overall, the CHP won 35 of Turkey's 81 provincial capitals, with the People's Alliance winning 32.
This was the first nationwide election since 1977 where the CHP came first in the popular vote, and the first election where the AK Party did not come first since its foundation in 2001. Nevertheless, the AK Party retained a narrow plurality in the number of district mayoralties won, and the People's Alliance scored small but notable victories against the CHP in Hatay and Kırklareli. The leader of the opposition Good Party, Meral Akşener, announced her pending resignation after her party almost halved its share of the popular vote.

Background

2019 elections

During the local elections of 2019, the opposition parties had formed alliances in key races, and had narrowly defeated the government in two of the biggest cities in Turkey, namely Istanbul and Ankara. The election in Istanbul was won by a margin smaller than 0.2%, which the government successfully petitioned for a re-run. Τhis culminated in the mayοral electiοn οf June 2019, which the οppοsitiοn wοn in s lsndslide.

2023 elections

The elections took place nine months after the 2023 parliamentary and presidential elections, where most parties opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rallied behind the leader of the Republican People's Party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, including the center-right Good Party and the pro-Kurdish Green Left Party . Erdoğan, despite the predictions of most surveys, was narrowly reelected. This was despite an ongoing economic crisis and rapidly rising inflation. Following the defeat, the opposition six-party coalition was dissolved by İYİ Party.

Election of Özgür Özel as the leader of CHP

Following the 2023 elections, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu remained as the leader of CHP despite calls for him to resign. This culminated in the contested 2023 party congress, where the deputy leader of the parliamentary group of the CHP, Özgür Özel, was elected as the new leader of the CHP. The call for change was led by the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, who heavily criticized the way in which the CHP's election campaign was run.

Candidates and alliances

People's Alliance

The governing AKP and their main partner MHP entered the election in a partnership, where they endorsed each others' candidates in key districts.
AKP nominated Murat Kurum, Member of Parliament for Istanbul (I) electoral district and former Minister of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change, for the mayoral election in Istanbul, which was endorsed by MHP. In Ankara, the alliance nominated the mayor of the district of Keçiören, Turgut Altınok.

CHP

The main opposition CHP, which had won Ankara and Istanbul in 2019 nominated the same mayors for a second term. Thus, Ekrem İmamoğlu was nominated for the municipality of Istanbul, and Mansur Yavaş was nominated in Ankara.

İYİ Party

After the 2023 elections, İYİ leader Meral Akşener, along with the party's executive committee, refused to cooperate with CHP like they did in 2019. This was despite the CHP repeatedly offering an alliance with them.

Political parties participating in the election

General information about the parties that meet the conditions to participate in the election as of 2 January 2024 is listed here. The Innovation Party announced that it would not participate in the election. The places of 35 political parties on the ballot paper were announced by the YSK on 27 January 2024.
Because of long-running court cases the Green Party and the Humanity and Freedom Party were not included in the ballot.


Security concerns and incidents

Around 594,000 security personnel were deployed nationwide to ensure the regular conduct of the election.
On 10 February, gunmen opened fire at a campaign event in the Küçükçekmece district municipality of Istanbul for AKP mayoral candidate Aziz Yeniay, critically injuring one person. Seventeen people were arrested in connection with the attack.
On 10 March, 33 people suspected of involvement with Islamic State were arrested in police raids in Sakarya Province on suspicion of plotting attacks ahead of the election. Authorities also recovered weapons, cash and "organizational documents".
On election day, one person was killed and 11 others were injured following a dispute over the election of a neighborhood administrator in Diyarbakır, while six people were injured in clashes in Şanlıurfa Province.

Results

Changes in control

The list below shows the parties governing the capitals of the 81 provinces before and after the local elections. Provinces in bold denote metropolitan municipalities.

Key races

Full list

Note: AK Party is abbreviated "AKP" and Yeniden Refah is abbreviated "YRP" here for visualisation purposes. Metropolitan municipalities are in bold.

Reactions

President Erdoğan acknowledged the AKP's electoral losses but said that it would mark "not an end for us but rather a turning point", adding that he would respect the result, "correct our mistakes and redress our shortcomings". The CHP’s Özgür Özel praised voters, saying that they had established a "new political order" in Turkey leading to "a new political climate". İYİ leader Meral Akşener called for an extraordinary party congress amid demands for her resignation.

Analysis

This was the first election since the governing Justice and Development Party 's establishment in 2001 that it did not come first in a national election, with the CHP winning 37.8% of the vote compared to the AKP's 35.5%. It was the first nationwide election since 1977 in which the CHP came first. CHP affiliated mayors now govern cities which make up 64% of Turkey's population and 80% of its economy. Commentators compared the vote to the 1989 local election, where the centre-left opposition at the time had scored significant victories against long-standing right-wing governments and came first in the popular vote. Nevertheless, the People's Alliance did score some victories against the opposition, taking the traditionally opposition-leaning mayoralties of Hatay and Kırklareli, and narrowly won a plurality of district municipalities.
The smaller centre-right opposition İYİ Party performed poorly across the country, coming sixth in terms of popular vote and losing over half its vote share. Its leader, Meral Akşener, called an extraordinary party congress but did not announce whether she would run again for the leadership. Meanwhile, the Islamist conservative New Welfare Party came third with over 6% of the vote, winning many municipalities in conservative areas from the AKP. The pro-Kurdish DEM Party marginally improved their share of the vote, despite some calls for boycotts in their traditional strongholds due to the likelihood of mayors being forcibly removed from office by the Interior Ministry on charges of supporting separatist terrorism. The Nationalist Movement Party, the AKP's junior alliance partner, lost votes but retained control of many key municipalities that it had won in the previous election.
Described as an "electoral disaster" for President Erdoğan, commentators speculated that any intention by the government to amend the constitution to extend his presidential term would likely be put on hold. Given the scale of their victories, both İmamoğlu and Yavaş are widely seen as possible opposition candidates for the next Turkish presidential election, which the government refused to bring forward in light of the results despite speculation over early elections.

Canceled annulment

On 2 April, authorities annulled the victory of DEM’s Abdullah Zeydan, who won more than 55% of the vote in the mayoral election in Van and declared his rival, Abdulahat Arvas from the AKP, the winner despite garnering only 27% of the vote. The decision led to anti-government protests in Van and Istanbul, as well as a rally in Ankara. The CHP sent members to Van in support. Tuncer Bakırhan of the DEM called the reversal a "political coup" while the party referred to it as "unlawful and illegitimate". The following day, the Supreme Election Board heard Zeydan's appeal and reinstated him as the winner.