CHP head Özgür Özel speaks in defence of arrested mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul city hall, 19 March 2025
Burak Kara · Getty
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan faces a tough choice: should he reach out to his political opponents or keep persecuting them? In recent months, he has favoured persecution. On 19 March Istanbul’s highly popular mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), was arrested on corruption and terrorism charges. The courts had already annulled his university degree, awarded 30 years ago. Under constitutional rules, this meant he could not run in the May 2023 presidential election. His imprisonment sparked nationwide protests, which were brutally suppressed, both in major CHP-run cities and urban centres traditionally loyal to Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
But Erdoğan also has an eye on the 2028 presidential election, and the key obstacle to a reelection bid — the constitutional limit of two consecutive presidential terms — may force him to rein in his authoritarian impulses. Erdoğan, who was elected by direct universal suffrage in 2014 (a first in Turkey), was reelected in 2018 under the newly adopted presidential system; he argued that the constitutional reform reset the clock, and he won again in 2023. For him to run yet again, the constitution would need to be amended by a vote in Turkey’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly.
One pathway to constitutional amendment is to secure the backing of three fifths of the assembly — 360 deputies. But in the 2023 parliamentary election (which coincided with the presidential vote), the AKP lost ground, winning only 267 of the assembly’s 600 seats, while its far-right ally, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), took just 50. Added together, these leave Erdoğan still well short of the 360 backers he needs. And in any case, in this scenario, further ratification by referendum is compulsory. With double-digit inflation (33.52% in July), three consecutive years of currency depreciation (2022-24), and repressive measures that have provoked strong opposition, putting such a change (…)
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