Speaking to his supporters after a night of historic wins for his opposition Republican People’s party, the Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoğlu, was quick to meet the moment, calling it “the dawn of a new era”.
“We are taking the first step towards a Turkey where democracy, freedom, equality, rationality, science, love, and solidarity flourish,” he told the ecstatic crowd, buoyed by a night of unexpected results in which the CHP swept municipalities nationwide, its best result since 1977.
“With this election, we have brought democracy out from within us,” he said, an echo – perhaps accidental – of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speech reflecting on his party’s losses, where he emphasised that democracy was the true winner of the vote.
The opposition’s victory, pushing aside Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party in most of Turkey’s major cities and particularly in Istanbul, cemented Imamoğlu’s role as the primary opposition challenger to Erdoğan, who formerly held the role of Istanbul mayor decades ago and made no secret of his desire to bring Istanbul back under his control.
Imamoğlu did more than secure a second term, he clinched a comfortable victory with a wide margin against a candidate often seen as little more than a stand-in for Erdoğan. The victory has positioned him in the eyes of many opposition supporters and analysts as the most likely challenger to Erdoğan’s presidency, amid rising suspicions the Turkish leader will seek to extend his term past 2028.
The two men have plenty in common, both with roots in Turkey’s Black Sea region known for its brusque and aggressive politics, giving them a broad appeal and an ability to rile up a crowd. Both have led Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and home to about a third of its economy, and both have faced pushback from Turkey’s courts. The two even share a passion for football.
The men both have a strong ability to appeal to voters, but they diverge when it comes to their politics. Imamoğlu, an affable former businessman who is married with three children, himself has said: “Our ideas are largely opposite.”
Selim Sazak, the head of Sanda Global, an Ankara-based consultancy that advised several campaigns during the local elections, described Imamoğlu’s political brand as a blend of charisma and his Black Sea roots as “Bill Clinton from Trabzon … without the infidelity.”
Despite their similarities, Erdoğan’s distaste for the Istanbul mayor transformed him from a political upstart into a rising star, when in 2019 the Turkish president demanded a re-run of the ballot from Imamoğlu’s initial win. This led to an even more resounding victory for Imamoğlu in a second ballot, and set him up as Erdoğan’s nemesis during his first term in office.
The result was legal trouble for Imamoğlu throughout his first term in office. Following his first win, a judge sentenced him to two and a half years in prison, and imposed a political ban for insulting public officials. An appeals court is yet to rule on the case.
The conviction was an echo of Erdoğan’s experience, after he was banned from politics and briefly jailed in 1999 for reciting a poem that a court ruled was an incitement to religious hatred. Last year, another court opened a case against Imamoğlu on charges of alleged rigging of bids on a tender while he was mayor of the Belikduzu district in 2015. The charges carry a potential sentence of three to seven years.
While Imamoğlu has frequently described obstacles from Ankara stymying his ability to deliver on his promises to Istanbulites, he found success in a campaign centred on repelling Erdoğan’s bid to put the central government in the capital back in control of Istanbul, a city of 16 million people.
The two charismatic political figures have sometimes led parallel lives. Imamoğlu, who graduated from Istanbul University with a degree in business administration in 1994, went into his family’s construction business. His love of football pushed him to become an administrator with his home town team in Trabzon, similar to Erdoğan’s brief career as a semi-professional footballer.
Imamoğlu recently recalled the mundane setting where he and Erdoğan first crossed paths. In the mid-1990s, after Erdoğan became mayor, he visited the meatball restaurant that a young Imamoğlu was running in Istanbul’s Gungoren district.
“When he was in his first months as mayor I hosted him,” Imamoğlu said. “He ate meatballs in my restaurant. I didn’t take his money. He won’t pay that bill as long as he lives.”
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
