Post-Erdogan Turkey Is Finally Here

Excerpt

Turkish politics is interesting again. For years, Turkey’s opposition was moribund. Under the leadership of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) had trouble attracting more than 25 percent to 30 percent of voters.

Then suddenly, last weekend, the opposition broke through. It’s not just that the CHP held on to mayoralties in big cities such as Ankara, Izmir, and Istanbul, where the sitting mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, has established himself as the most dynamic Turkish politician since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was himself mayor in the mid-1990s. Making matters worse for the Turkish leader, the CHP and other parties soundly defeated mayors from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 15 other municipalities.

Steven A. Cook is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book, The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East, will be published in June 2024. Twitter: @stevenacook Sinan Ciddi is an associate professor of national security studies at Marine Corps University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Twitter: @SinanCiddi