The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) saw two mayors from opposition parties joining its ranks on Wednesday.
The mayor of southern province Antalya’s Aksu district, Isa Yıldırım, and the mayor of central province Konya’s Sarayönü district, Necati Koç, formally switched sides to the party at AK Party’s parliamentary group meeting on Wednesday in Ankara, in the presence of the party’s chair, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Yıldırım earlier resigned from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), while Koç parted ways with the New Welfare Party (YRP).
In the past four months, 20 mayors joined the AK Party from the opposition. Most prominent among them is Özlem Çerçioğlu, a long-serving mayor of the major western city of Aydın for the CHP. The AK Party, however, has fared poorly in the 2024 municipal elections, lagging behind the CHP in most municipalities, for the first time in its history, going back to the early 2000s. The party, however, still dominates the Turkish political scene thanks to its successive victories in the past 23 years, especially in general elections that made Erdoğan one of the longest-serving leaders in the history of the Republic of Türkiye, both as prime minister and president.
The majority of those joining the AK Party as mayors are from the YRP, which positions itself with a similar ideology to the party. The party has supported the People’s Alliance, led by the AK Party, in the 2023 general elections, although it later went its own way and fielded candidates in the 2024 municipal elections. The CHP mayors who joined the AK Party in recent months are mostly those who fell out with the new administration of Türkiye’s oldest party, which took office after an intraparty election in November 2023. The CHP portrays itself as the exact opposite of the AK Party, although it courted several prominent figures who have been ideologically aligned with the ruling party in the past.
The AK Party’s losses in the 2024 local vote are widely regarded as the electorate’s reaction to certain underperforming mayors and the party in general amid worries over the heightened cost of living. But the longstanding party hopes to recover in the next election, relying on boosting what it calls “the 1994 spirit.” Erdoğan is credited with introducing a new model of municipal governance when he won the municipal elections in Türkiye’s most populated city, Istanbul, that year. Erdoğan’s accomplishments as mayor set an example for future municipalities of the AK Party. The AK Party secured successive victories in municipal elections, following in the footsteps of Erdoğan and is credited with turning around the fortunes of most cities and districts, which had suffered from negligence in public services under the reign of mayors from opposition parties.
