site.btaWhat Will Turks Vote for on March 31?

This Sunday, March 31, more than 61.4 million Turkish citizens will vote to elect local authorities for the next five years - mayors in all 81 provincial capitals, in hundreds of districts and municipalities and tens of thousands of neighborhoods and neighborhoods, as well as provincial and municipal council members.

Voting will take place in a total of 206,000 polling stations across the country, which will be located in school buildings. Monday will be a non-working day for students.

About 12 million of the voters are registered in the megalopolis of Istanbul. For the first time, 1, 032, 610 young people will vote in these elections. According to the records of the Supreme Election Council, more than 210,000 Turkish voters are natives of Bulgaria. Only Turkish citizens with residency status in the country are eligible to vote in the local elections.

Under Turkish election law, voting is compulsory and those who do not turn up at the polls are subject to a fine. In the parliamentary and presidential elections in May 2023, the penalty for not voting was 300 Turkish liras (about EUR 9).

According to the Turkish Ministry of Interior, 594,000 police, gendarmerie, coast guard and volunteer personnel will protect security on election day.

Local elections in Turkey generally have a different dynamic from general elections, in which the focus falls on parties and coalitions. In local elections, local issues and the abilities of local candidates come to the fore.

Battle for Istanbul

Although Sunday's elections will be held everywhere in Turkey, "March 31 will be the vote for Istanbul", said pollster Bekir Agirdir.

There are a total of 49 mayoral candidates for Istanbul, the first time this has happened in the megalopolis' recent history.

The main race in Istanbul will be between Ekrem Imamoglu of the main opposition Republican People's Party (RPP), who is running for a second term, and Murat Kurum of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Kurum has behind him the powerful support of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has personally and very actively campaigned for Kurum at all the rallies he has attended as AKP leader.

The AKP is the largest political force in the country, with about 12 million members.

Unlike the local elections in 2019, the election campaign this time is very much dominated by Erdogan's will to necessarily wrestle power over Istanbul from the hands of the opposition and current mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.

The Kurdish effect

The pro-Kurdish DEM party, which from the very beginning fielded two of its mayoral candidates against Imamoglu, threatening to take votes away from Imamoglu, announced days before the vote that it would join forces with the main opposition RPP and support its candidates in 22 municipalities of Istanbul.

Kurdish support will undoubtedly bolster Ekrem Imamoglu's assets, analysts say.

The economic factor

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "for the first time has opponents against him who are stronger than the ideological, religious and social differences of the AKP electorate, and who are a unifying factor for voters' attitudes," said freelance analyst Fehim Guclu, with whom we analyzed the situation before the elections.

"These are the economic difficulties, the rise in the cost of living (the absolute poverty line is around 19,000 Turkish liras and the minimum wage is 17,000 Turkish liras), the low pensions that inflation is melting, the unaffordable living costs, especially for pensioners, who number 15.8 million, the rise in the price of medicines, the problems of the health system, unemployment among young people, the devaluation of the Turkish lira. In fact, these are problems that are the result of the AKP's rule, which has been in power for more than 20 years, and the discontent is directed against it. March 31 will not only be a local election, but also an election in which, for the first time, discontent with the economic situation will be the determining factor. This is what I see when I walk the streets," he says.

What do the pollsters say?

According to the results of nine polling agencies, which publish the arithmetic averages of the results of the polls, Ekrem Imamoglu leads Murat Kurum by 41.9% against 39.8%. Meral Danish Bestas of the pro-Kurdish DEM, Bugra Kavuncu of the Good Party, Mehmet Altinoz of the New Welfare Party, Azmi Karamahmutoglu of the Victory Party follow.