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Sultan Erdogan’s time is slipping away


The defeat of the Presidential party in Istanbul where Erdogan used to be mayor may indeed mark the beginning of his slow decline

Erdogan with his former ministers Ali Babacan and Ahmet Davutoglu. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

The defeat of the Presidential party in Istanbul where Erdogan used to be mayor may indeed mark the beginning of his slow decline

“Who conquers Istanbul, conquers Turkey” is something Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has often claimed, and now – after disappointing electoral results in the biggest cities in the country, in which his Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered resounding defeats – there’s large question mark as to whether it will hold firm and on the political future of the country. With the repetition of the Istanbul vote Erdogan suffered a terrible own goal in favour of the opposition candidate: by a margin of ten percentage points and victory in almost all the electoral districts, Ekrem Imamoglu won a landslide victory, standing as the new politician capable of changing Turkey’s destiny. Compared to the election on 31 March his support hasn’t just grown exponentially, snatching most of the historic conservatives seats out of the hands of the AKP, but even where the president’s party did win out, its support has drastically fallen. This defeat was perhaps foreseeable, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. In actual fact, after the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) ruled in favour of the appeal for supposed irregularities filed by the AKP, a large section of society took to the streets behind the slogan Her şey çok güzel olacak (It will all be very more beautiful), proving that, in spite of everything, individual choices cannot be denied. All the electoral song and dances produced by the AKP were for nought as was its rather defensive reply based on the hashtag #DahaGüzelOlacak (it will be all the more beautiful). 

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