Three chairs of provincial branches of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) sought to resign this month as the party mulls a reshuffle following the March 31 municipal elections.
Hikmet Ayar, head of the party for the northern province of Rize, was the first to announce his decision to step down on Tuesday. Ayar said he did not see himself as successful, although the party won 13 out of 18 district municipalities in the province where AK Party leader President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s family hails from.
“I asked for being relieved from my job and to help our president (to realize intra-party changes),” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
For the first time in years, the AK Party lagged behind the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in the elections. The CHP won 14 metropolitan municipalities, including Istanbul and the capital Ankara, though the AK Party sought to retake after losing them to the CHP in the 2019 elections. The CHP also won 21 provincial municipalities, while the AK Party was victorious in 12 metropolitan and 12 provincial municipalities.
Convening his party’s branch heads for 81 provinces at a meeting in early May, Erdoğan hinted at changes within party cadres in the aftermath of the elections. He emphasized that they would not allow those seeking to advance their own political career and would focus on winning the hearts of “new names that will empower us.”
On Wednesday, Emrah Erkan Bulucu, who heads the AK Party’s Adıyaman branch, similarly announced that he decided to step down from the post. The eastern province of Adıyaman has long been a stronghold of the AK Party but the CHP won nearly half of the votes against the party in the election. Bulucu said in a statement that although the party was successful in several districts, they faced an “unexpected result” in the central district of Adıyaman won by the opposition. Like Ayar, he highlighted that he would continue working for the party.
Also on Wednesday, Akif Gür announced in a social media post that he would step down from his post as head of the AK Party’s provincial head for the eastern province of Batman. Gür, who has been in office since 2018, said his request to step down was accepted by the party’s headquarters. He stated that they were “impacted” by unexpected election results for his party in Batman. He said they “accepted” what the voters “conveyed to them by not voting,” he stated. The election was marked by a sharp drop in turnout, something political pundits tie to voters’ reaction to economic conditions in the country.
Answering questions about the provincial heads, the party’s spokesperson Ömer Çelik told reporters on Wednesday that “the change” was nothing extraordinary in the AK Party. “We are a party in constant transformation while preserving our traditions and experience,” he said. Çelik said the party would take steps to change some names in provincial branches.
