Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu is a rising figure in Turkish politics but what propelled the former contractor to fame may also prove to be his downfall. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which lost to the opposition mayor in Türkiye’s most populated city Istanbul in 2019, in a first in years, slammed Imamoğlu’s tenure at a news conference on Wednesday.
İmamoğlu, who is preparing to challenge Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, head of his Republican People’s Party (CHP) for top chair, may run again in the next municipal elections scheduled for 2024 if he can be convinced. But the AK Party believes that Imamoğlu, who was the mayor of a far-flung district of the city before his unprecedented victory in the 2019 vote, is doomed to fail.
Tevfik Göksu, mayor of Istanbul’s Esenler district and acting chair of the AK Party’s group in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) Assembly, lashed out at the CHP mayor at the news conference. Göksu, a fierce critic of Imamoğlu with his fervent speeches at the assembly meetings, was well-prepared as he summed up four years under Imamoğlu.
Standing in front of a giant screen reading “Istanbul’s Wasted Years,” Göksu said that Imamoğlu only engaged in public relations work and caused Istanbul to “lose four years.”
Before Göksu took the stage with graphs, photos and videos showing the failures of Imamoğlu, AK Party Istanbul branch director Osman Nuri Kabaktepe addressed the journalists and Istanbul district chairs of his party. “He failed his midterm exams and he will fail final exams,” Kabaktepe said about Imamoğlu.
“The CHP administration of Istanbul did not give Istanbul any concrete project. Moreover, they claimed investments done during the tenure of our late brother Kadir,” Kabaktepe said, using an affectionate name for former Mayor Kadir Topbaş of the AK Party. Topbaş is credited with expanding the city’s transportation network and establishing other exemplary services in the city during his lengthy tenure between 2004 and 2017.
Istanbul is seen as a key city for all parties competing to govern the country. “Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Türkiye” has been a popular saying in Turkish politics and indeed, the AK Party did not lose any election while it retained the mayor’s seat in Istanbul, except in the 2019 election. Still, the party remains in power as it won the majority in legislative elections on May 14 and the presidential runoff on May 28, which secured another term for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan himself rose to prominence in Turkish politics while he was serving as Istanbul's mayor in the late 1990s.
Kabaktepe said that the incumbent IBB administration had “nothing to say and nothing to do.” “Mr. Imamoğlu’s policy is entirely concentrated on a passion for power. He first dreamed of running for president and then, for the chairpersonship of CHP. Unfortunately, Istanbul has never been a part of his dreams. Rest assured, Istanbul will not have Imamoğlu in its future,” a confident Kabaktepe said. He stated that Imamoğlu neglected Istanbul for a long time while pursuing his dream of higher seats. “He believed he can be more popular by adapting an argumentative rhetoric, insulting others. Eventually, he failed in his ambition for the CHP’s top seat and his party apparently offered him a deputy chair. All the while, this cost Istanbul four years. Kabaktepe criticized Imamoğlu for his failures at the helm of Istanbul, such as the closure of a critical tunnel that would relieve traffic plaguing the city and the “unending” construction of metro lines.
He noted that Istanbul “came to a halt” under Imamoğlu. “Just as escalators leading to metro stations did not function, mass transportation also came to a halt,” he said, referring to buses often breaking down due to insufficient maintenance and other problems. “Istanbul is tired of disrupted transportation, invasion of mosquitos, an administration favoring its party’s supporters in employment and everything against the culture of the city,” he said.
For his part, Tevfik Göksu said he has never seen “a devotion” to the city during Imamoğlu’s tenure. “He knows he lost and will lose in the next election and this is why he tries to be the chairperson of (the CHP),” he said.
“He pretended that the projects launched during the AK Party’s leadership in Istanbul were his projects. He could not even add more to the metro lines we planned and launched. He lied to the people, telling them that the government blocked his projects. He put on a show,” he said.
Göksu then gave several figures about the "wasted" budget of Istanbul municipality on projects that failed to take off. “You could have built about 250 kilometers of additional metro lines or about 300,000 housing units with what IBB spent in four years. They spent TL 3.8 billion only for advertising and you could have built 2,533 housing units, parking lots for more than 31,000 vehicles or purchased 633 new buses at that cost,” he said.
