March 26, 1989 was one of the days that sticks in my memory even though I was only 12 years old. There was great enthusiasm in our house that day. Local elections had been held and TRT was announcing the election results in the evening. The Social Democrat Populist Party (SHP), which my family strongly supported, had achieved a great electoral success. The public, fed up with the ANAP's policies, voted the SHP first with 28.7 percent of the vote. After September 12, 1980, it was one of the most important achievements of the left.
The other left-wing neighbors in the building where we lived gathered around us; it was like a feast. Thirty-nine of the 67 provinces that existed that day had been won. Although I was still a child, I was sharing the joy of my family and friends. The next day, all the democratic newspapers were bought. The general comments were that after this local election success, the SHP government was inevitable in the first general election. However, things did not go in that direction.
From victory to defeat
The rise of the PKK caused tensions within the SHP and the defection of a group of Kurdish deputies from the party led to a serious loss of votes in some eastern provinces. The 1991 general elections were not encouraging. In 1994, a large part of the gains of the 1989 local elections were lost due to events such as the ISKI scandal in the municipalities, some municipal services that failed, the intensive use of these for black propaganda purposes by rivals and by Star TV, Turkey's first private TV channel owned by Cem Uzan, which was watched by almost everyone at the time, the SHP's inadequate communication strategy in the face of these discourses, and finally the division within the left. The Welfare Party's success that day paved the way for today. One of the winners was Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who became the Mayor of Istanbul.
CHP puts municipalities at the forefront of the fight against the government
After many years, the CHP once again achieved a significant success in the 2019 local elections. Thanks to Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's disciplined management, CHP municipalities made it to 2023 without any problems. When the dates showed March 31, 2024, the public, fed up with the AKP's economic policies, turned to the social democrats to teach them a lesson, just as they had done to the ANAP in 1989, and voted the CHP into first place.
The CHP's general policy seems to be that the work of the municipalities will be appreciated by the public and this will be reflected in the upcoming elections. The prominence of Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş in this process prepares the ground for this policy.
In fact, Kılıçdaroğlu also attached great importance to the work of the municipalities after 2019. However, in doing so, he never pinned all his hopes on the municipalities, and he pressured the government with both the alliance policies and the corruption discourse that he himself spearheaded. While squeezing the government with the discourse on the missing 128 billion dollars and the ’gang of 5“, on the other hand, he forced the government to take steps with discourses such as EYT and the two bonuses given to pensioners on holidays.
Mayors' weight in the party has increased
Despite all this, the influence of mayors has increased considerably in the process. This increased influence even triggered a change of leadership in the CHP in 2023. Today, municipalities have overtaken organizations in the CHP.
In the party hierarchy, district and provincial leaders should be ahead of the mayor, but in many places the opposite is the case. Municipalities wield a strong executive power and this has led party leaders and members to accept them as the main authority in many places.
Has having too many municipalities made the organization lazy?
So, can winning many municipalities increase a party's challenge? If the party leadership is strong and there is discipline, yes. But on the contrary, it can also harm. Party members who start working in municipalities often hold back from actions that require a clear stance against the government on the grounds that “I am now a municipality employee”. In other words, it would not be wrong to say that having too many municipalities has made CHP organizations lazy in many places.
You can score a lot of goals, but you can also concede a lot of goals
The other side of the story is that the CHP's strategy of paving the way to power with municipalities has attracted the attention of the government. This is leading to efforts to hit the CHP on its claim. After all, waging a political struggle based on mayors is not easy against the AKP government, which has serious weaknesses in respecting the law.
The mayor is ultimately administratively subordinate to the Ministry of Interior and is open to inspection or investigation at any time. Sometimes, even if there is no intentional wrongdoing, an inspector with bad intentions can find something wrong in a municipality. In short, if you use municipalities as a means of scoring goals, you will score a lot of goals, which means spending a lot of your energy on defending municipalities.
Erdoğan wants CHP to experience a new 1989- 1991- 1994 period
Erdoğan, who has been in politics since the 1970s and owes his current career in part to the SHP's failure to seize the opportunity in 1989, seems to want the CHP to go through the SHP's 1989-1991-1994 period. The CHP's biggest assurance in this regard is the wisdom of the people. In other words, the CHP thinks that people will see the oppression and victimization of CHP municipalities and will return the favor to the government at the ballot box. However, one should not rely too much on this idea. Erdoğan knows that opposition voters are more questioning than his own voters. For this reason, he is also aware that if he can uncover troubling situations related to CHP municipalities, this may turn into dissatisfaction and reaction against the CHP among some opposition voters.
Explaining the AKP's double standards is useless, the solution lies in offensive policies
Even if the statements made by Ekrem İmamoğlu and Özgür Özel in the wake of the detention of Beşiktaş Mayor Rıza Akpolat, that the government ignores the wrongdoings of AKP municipalities and applies a double standard while attacking CHP municipalities, are politically justified, one should not hide behind this discourse. Everyone in Turkey, from A to Z, knows what the AKP government is. And those who continue to support the AKP have embraced its policies.
What needs to be done, then, is to avoid incidents that would give the AKP government as much material as possible in the municipalities, and to reintroduce policies that address corruption, as was the case under Kılıçdaroğlu.
A struggle with organizations at the forefront must rise
For this, the CHP needs to strengthen its organizations and direct its struggle in a more ideological way that prioritizes the general problems of the people. When the minimum wage is announced, making the statement “The minimum wage in CHP municipalities will be 30,000 liras” has no meaning for other minimum wage earners who do not receive that money. The important thing is to be the voice of those who do not receive that money. For this reason, it is necessary to use a more ideological and decisive language. It is obvious that the party leadership, which spends precious time on “normalization” rhetoric, is far from achieving this.