The Conversation: Erdoğan’s control over Turkey is ending – what comes next?

When Turkey’s currency, the lira, dropped by 20% last year, the slide risked a global crisis. Turkey is also an important NATO ally, allowing its land and air bases to be used for the alliance’s military operations into places such as neighboring Syria and Iraq. [...]

Istanbul, a city of 16 million people, accounts for one-third of Turkey’s gross domestic product and is larger than many national economies. Whoever controls Istanbul’s massive municipal budget also controls its patronage. [...]

Earlier this year, more than 1,000 Turkish academics and their colleagues overseas signed an open letter condemning Erdogan’s bombing of more than 100 targets in Kurdish areas in Syria near its borders. [...]

Whether or how quickly the end for Erdoğan may come will be determined by how united the opposition remains. It is also possible a new political party will emerge, created by former allies of Erdoğan who said their current party under his leadership “caused a serious slide in rhetoric, actions, morals and politics.”

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Los Angeles Times: How will Turkey’s authoritarian president react to opposition’s big win in Istanbul mayoral race?

Ekrem Imamoglu of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, won 54% of the vote, soundly beating the AKP’s Binali Yildrim, who took 45%. It was a far wider margin of victory than Imamoglu achieved in the original March 31 vote.

Turnout was very high — 85% — in part reflecting public unhappiness over the recount that was ordered on technical grounds by the country’s highest electoral body, widely suspected of acting at the president’s behest.

Erdogan offered congratulations to Imamoglu, and Yildrim conceded graciously even before the votes had all been tallied. But in a sign some read as ominous, Monday-morning headlines in pro-government newspapers made no reference to the opposition victory, instead merely noting that the vote had taken place. [...]

The central government could take steps to sap Imamoglu’s administrative powers, or even invent a reason to charge him personally with a criminal offense of some kind, a fate that has befallen many of the president’s foes. [...]

Criticism of the president, once rare, burst into the open. Mustafa Yeneroglu, an AKP parliament member from Istanbul, tweeted: “We lost Istanbul because we lost moral superiority.”

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Foreign Affairs: Have Turkey’s Elections Produced a Challenger to Erdogan?

Imamoglu and his rival, former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, have both declared themselves Istanbul’s mayor-elect. Less than 0.2 percent of the more than eight million votes cast separates them. A recount has entered its second week, and anxiety is mounting within the opposition over whether the AKP will relinquish its quarter-century hold on Istanbul should the final tally confirm Imamoglu’s victory. [...]

Before the election, Imamoglu was a largely unknown district mayor of a far-flung Istanbul suburb. His campaign addressed everyday grievances, such as traffic congestion and job creation. Since the vote, he has shown a tougher side, holding impromptu press conferences to accuse the AKP of “acting like they’ve had their toys taken away,” although he has also tried to project a sense of normalcy to reassure a nervous public. [...]

Despite Erdogan’s theatrics, many voters went ahead and punished the AKP for policies that have unleashed soaring inflation and unemployment. Although Imamoglu refrained from attacking Erdogan, who remains Turkey’s most popular politician, he hammered a ruling elite ensconced in “their palaces” while “Istanbul is in a spiral of hunger, poverty, and unemployment.” Largely ignored by the media, Imamoglu took to Facebook to livestream visits to street markets, where he hugged fans and politely engaged AKP supporters who refused to shake his hand.

Pious voters have long shunned the centrist CHP, repelled by its rigidly secularist ideology and stodgy, elitist image. But nominating Imamoglu, a practicing Muslim who scheduled time on the campaign trail to attend Friday prayers, allowed the CHP, humbled by so many years in the political wilderness, to broaden its appeal. It last ran Ankara and Istanbul in the 1970s, and has been in the opposition in parliament since then as well.

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Bloomberg: Tsipras Fights on All Fronts as Greece Is Back in the Spotlight

“The worst problem for Tsipras, for the government, but also for Greece is the evolving ‘rogueness’ of Turkey,” said Aristides Hatzis, a professor of law and economics at the University of Athens. “Diminishing American influence on the region is a destabilizing factor and the stakes are very high,” Hatzis said, adding that Greece is not a primary concern for Turkey, but a part of an overall plan by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to establish hegemony in the region. [...]

While “the possibility of deliberate escalation is relatively low,” there is increased concern of an accidental trigger event between the two countries, said Thanos Dokos, director-general of the Athens-based Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. Greek and Turkish military ships and aircraft have always operated in close proximity, but the Turkish armed forces have been stripped of experienced officers following the 2016 coup attempt and shrinking U.S., EU and NATO influence over Ankara make outside mediation less certain in the event of an incident, he said. [...]

Any wavering of internal support could put Tsipras’s thin parliamentary majority at risk ahead of national elections scheduled for next year, a grave concern at a moment when the main opposition party, New Democracy, is leading in the polls.

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