The Turkish opposition announced its victory in the local elections at the expense of the Justice and Development Party led by the president Recep Tayyip ErdoganHe suffered the bitterness of losing for the second time at the hands of one of his most prominent political opponents, Ekrem Imamoglu, the candidate of the Republican People’s Party, who managed to retain the mayorship of Istanbul, which he won for the first time in 2019.
Erdogan, who previously served as mayor of Istanbul during the period between 1994 and 1998, was clearly affected by this “sudden loss,” as he said that the results of these elections would be a “turning point” for his party, which he pledged to study “the messages coming from the people.”
The opposition and its candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, were able to win the mayorship of Istanbul, which has a population of 16 million people and leads the Turkish economy, against the Justice and Development Party’s candidate, Murat Kurum. This win is seen, once again, as a change in an already divided political landscape Türkiye Due to economic challenges and security threats posed by successive attacks.
Ekrem Imamoglu, who belongs to the Republican People’s Party, announced that he will retain his position, which he has held since 2019, with the majority of ballot boxes counted. He told his supporters who were celebrating the victory: “Tomorrow is a new spring for our country.”
Imamoglu, 52, is increasingly seen as the biggest rival to Erdogan’s party in the next presidential election in 2028.
Ekrem Imamoglu is an engineer and businessman by origin. He was born in 1971 in Akcaabat in the state of Trabzon, eastern Turkey, to a father who worked as a merchant and a mother who was a farmer.
He studied in primary school in the village of Yildizli, where he moved at the age of 3 years, and in secondary school he joined Trabzon School, then at Eastern Mediterranean University in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, where he obtained a diploma in civil engineering.
Oglu joined the University of Giren, and studied at the Faculty of Communications before moving to Istanbul, where he studied at the Faculty of Business Administration and graduated from it. At the same university, he completed his master’s degree in the Department of Human Resources and Management, and graduated from it in 1995.
Oglu obtained a membership in the Trabzonspor club for a year in 2002, and later worked as a manager in the Beylikduzu club. Before that, he worked in the family company in the field of construction. He also had experiences in the food industry when he managed a restaurant in the Gonghorn area. in Istanbul.
Imamoglu’s beginnings in politics go back to his school days when he was part of the youth movement of the “Motherland” Party in the early nineties, after which he began his contact with the Republican People’s Party, which suggested that he run for the party for mayor of Beylikdüzü in the local elections in 2004, but he refused.
In 2008, Oglu officially joined the Republican People’s Party, and a year later he was appointed head of the party’s Beylikduzu region, and a while later he became the first region head to be elected by the party’s regional conference.
He was re-elected as mayor of the Beylikduzu region in 2012, before resigning from this position a year later in preparation for his participation in the local elections the following year. He won the presidency of the Beylikduzu municipality in 2014 after he succeeded in improving his party’s performance and raising his vote rate by about 21 percent. %.
Legal troubles
Since he became mayor of Istanbul in 2019, Imamoglu has become a judicial target, after he defeated Erdogan and his party, which controlled the largest Turkish city for 25 years.
In the middle of last year, the opposition candidate was tried on charges related to corruption and forging a financial contract at the end of 2015 when he was mayor of Beylikduzu, a suburb of Istanbul.
In this case, Imamoglu is accused, along with six other people, of “forging” a contract that is believed to have caused the public finances losses of 250,000 liras (about 90,000 dollars at the time). This is something that Imamoglu denies, and says that a previous investigation into the same matter concluded that there was no infringement. Erdogan has also previously been accused of using the courts against his political opponents.
This was not the first time that Imamoglu found himself before the court, as in November 2022 he was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison, in addition to being stripped of his political rights on charges of “insulting” members of the Election Commission, but he was able to appeal this ruling and retain his position at the helm. Municipal.
Upon winning office in 2019, Imamoglu was initially stripped of his narrow election victory, but came back and won by a larger margin in the runoff.
Political ambitions
Imamoglu does not hide his political ambitions, the seriousness of which enhances his popularity in opinion polls, which is not well received by the ruling party camp.
Imamoglu was excluded from the presidential elections in 2023, due to the judicial ruling issued against him.
Erdogan won the presidential elections after obtaining 52.2% of the votes in the second round against the opposition candidate Kemal KılıçdaroğluThis stage prompted Imamoglu to question the poor performance of the Republican People’s Party.
Davutoglu calls for change within the ranks of the Republican People’s Party, which was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of the modern Turkish Republic, to achieve better results in future elections and to get rid of Erdogan’s control over most aspects of political and social life in Turkey.
Following the loss in the presidential elections, the Republican People’s Party appointed the relatively unknown Ozgur Ozil as its president, replacing its leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. After two tense voting rounds at the party conference, Kılıçdaroğlu, 74, lost his position to Ozil, who is supported by Imamoglu.
Ihsanoglu enjoys the support of Kurdish voters, and their votes were an important reason for his victory in the Istanbul municipality in 2019, after the pro-Kurdish party decided to support the candidate of the Republican People’s Party, and not to present a candidate to avoid the dispersion of votes and give a chance to the candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party.
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