Today, March 30, 52 million Turks cast their votes in local elections. Although the vote won’t affect the parliamentary majority of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the elections are perceived to be a popularity contest for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is mired in a major corruption scandal. Social media users have reported that they have never seen such long lines at polling stations. It is expected that these elections will witness the highest participation rates in any election in Turkish history. It seems like Turkey has an opportunity for change.
Some observers, including Al-Monitor columnist Mustafa Akyol, argue that Turkey’s local elections matter because they will act as a predictor for this summer’s presidential election in which Prime Minister Erdogan is expected to run. Today’s vote, observers say, will also help to predict the parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2015 (but which may be held at the same time as the presidential election).
But several factors might make today’s local elections and voting in general an irrelevant practice in the Turkish political context.The first reason for this pessimistic outlook is history. Since Turkey’s transition to multiparty politics in 1946, electoral upsets in which an opposition party wins a parliamentary majority have been extremely rare. Successful upsets happened only four times, in 1950, 1965, 1983 and 2002. And opposition parties that took major municipalities from the governing party in local elections, as did the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) in 1989 and the Welfare Party (RP) in 1994, failed to secure a parliamentary majority in the next general election.
This point is important because opposition parties’ failure to score major electoral upsets has had dire consequences for Turkey. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), the AKP’s main contender at the moment, failed to win the general elections in 1957 and 1977, which contributed to the military coups of 1960 and 1980. The military felt it had to do what the opposition could not.
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