Turkey's upcoming local elections will be held on March 31, 2019. During the elections held over the last 15 years, the main topic of discussion has always been the electoral competition between the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), with the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara dominating the campaigns.
On the other hand, local issues have by no means come to the front of public discussion during Turkey's local elections in the recent years. Instead, opposition political parties have always preferred to compete with the ruling AK Party through arguments and claims fabricated and specifically benefiting the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ). They seemed to be indifferent about the illegal sources and the illegitimate means through which information is acquired and disclosed to the public.
In terms of the upcoming local elections, people have already begun to speculate about the possible results in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir to such an extent that the possible candidates from the AK Party and the CHP for these pivotal municipalities currently constitute the main topic of debate in political lobbies. Similar to the constant media-covered stream of transferred football players, every day new names are being introduced to Turkey's political agenda.
Other crucial topics of electoral discussions surround Kurdish votes, the prospective results in the municipalities in Turkey's southeastern regions and the electoral performance of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP); a party that claims to represent Kurdish voters but has yet to produce any democratic benefit for Turkey's Kurdish electorate.
Although the HDP emerged as an exclusively regional political party, it has attracted a constituency in Turkey's western and southern cities, mainly thanks to the Kurdish electorate in the western regions. While HDP's voter support has been flexible in the southeastern regions, the support it receives in western cities tends to remain solid. In this respect, since 30 percent of the votes cast in southeastern regions shuttle between the AK Party and the HDP, the latter has begun to lose votes to the ruling political party in the regions where it feels itself the strongest.
After the PKK's sabotage of the Reconciliation Process and the relaunching of the state's military operations against the PKK, the GENAR research institute conducted insightful research in the region. One of the studies demonstrated that 30 percent of the region's population supports the military operations in the region, while the study also found that the conservative Kurdish electorate considers their support for the HDP flexible, thus open to change.
Istanbul constitutes the second flexible electorate for HDP's votes. Kurdish voters in Istanbul mainly support the HDP in general elections, while in local elections 35 percent of the same group lean toward the AK Party. This electoral ratio rises or falls according to the political identity of the AK Party's candidate for the municipality of Istanbul. Thus, a conservative candidate is more likely to raise the votes of the AK Party in Istanbul, as Kurdish voters constitute mainly a conservative constituency.
A related topic is the issue of the trustees that were assigned to southeastern municipalities after the mayors of the HDP were dismissed due to their open or secret support for the PKK. Now the question is whether the municipal performance of these state servants might have an effect on the possible results of the upcoming elections in the southeastern regions.
Since its founding, the AK Party has shined as a service-oriented political party that always strives to complete Turkey's shortcomings in the fields of transportation, health, education, agriculture, human rights and so forth. Yet, the tremendous magnitude of services that have been realized during the AK Party's 16 years in power do not seem to raise its votes substantially in southeastern regions; therefore, the services established by the trustees have not substantially changed the ruling political party's electoral performance in the region. To increase their Kurdish votes, the AK Party must launch a political campaign against the PKK and the HDP.
Mainly relying on identity politics, the HDP's political propaganda is built on an anachronistic Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and an enmity against the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Therefore, in order to win over Kurdish voters, it is necessary for the ruling political party not only to emphasize the services that the government has delivered for the people of the region, but also to tackle the issues at hand through an intellectual and political stance.