8 months before the municipal elections… What is required of Turkey's opposition?

Turkey is entering 8 months from now, a new electoral entitlement of municipal elections that will represent the first challenge to the Turkish opposition following its inability to bring down Erdogan's regime in presidential elections.

Some fear the loss of the opposition candidate in the presidential election will affect the cohesion of forces and parties against Erdogan's regime in Turkey, especially with reports of disagreements within Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s Republican People's Party.

According to press reports, there are calls within the People's Party for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to "resign, leave the leadership to the middle generation, especially Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavash".

According to observers, the Turkish opposition is required to grant broader powers and powers to young leaders in order to maintain the level of momentum they have achieved in the presidential elections and to attract the Turkish youth bloc to their ranks.

Municipal Battle

According to the Turkish affairs expert, Osama al-Saeed, Turkey's opposition achieved a range of gains during the elections, which must be built upon and prepared for the rest of the next entitlements, especially as the municipal elections approach.

"The Turkish opposition should take advantage of the momentum that emerged from the presidential election, move aggressively and exploit the decline in the AKP's popularity in the last parliamentary elections, in which the number of seats it received fell by 7%."

He noted that "AKP will enter the upcoming municipal elections in an effort to shipment the public balance lost in the parliamentary elections due to the great interest of the municipal battle within Turkey, especially in major municipalities such as Ankara and Istanbul" "The party has not forgotten that it lost Istanbul's presidency to the opposition despite Erdogan's intervention and re-election to prevent the victory of the opposition, which nevertheless succeeded in gaining office."

The researcher believes that "Turkey's opposition has learned and learned a very important lesson from the presidential election and has become clearly aware that cohesion and achieving a minimum consensus among powerful parties can put it in a better position with the AKP," pointing out that "reaching the runoff stage in the presidential election for the first time in Turkish history is a significant achievement."

"The opposition has also made progress on the path of parliamentary elections, garnering larger seats in parliament, which will enable it to play a stronger political role in the next phase."

New Faces

According to al-Saeed, "the Turkish opposition must provide new faces and young cadres. This is a lesson that the opposition must learn from the presidential election," pointing out, "If the opposition candidate in the face of Erdogan is more youthful, its fortunes will grow and it may be able to surprise and overthrow Erdogan."

He considers that "the introduction of young candidates and new faces is an enrichment of Turkey's political arena and a courtship of the youth voting bloc that first participated in the elections and had a significant impact on the results".

Election lessons

He noted that "the elections have seen alliances and rapprochement between secular and nationalist parties such as what happened between the peoples and the “Victory Party", pointing out that "this can be repeated and work towards rapprochement between parties with different ideologies but is grouped by party interests and coordinates during the next elections."

The Turkish affairs expert concluded by stressing that "there are lessons during the last elections that the opposition must reconsider and rearrange its paperwork quickly, begin to introduce new faces and that the founding generation of opposition parties step down and give way to new faces to change the structure of the party life of the Turkish opposition so that it can attract a significant voting bloc that can change the regime."

Next Challenge

In his turn, Turkish researcher Mohammed Hamed argues that "the Turkish opposition, having succeeded in agreeing significantly on one candidate and the Union of Parties of the so-called hexagonal table, can be said to have achieved the utmost it can do", noting that "the challenge is its ability to sustain these alliances even though they are originally electoral alliances."

"The challenge for the Turkish opposition in the upcoming municipal elections is to preserve what it has achieved in the past municipal elections, namely the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara."

The researcher believes that "the Turkish opposition has been able to achieve a lot of positives in the presidential election and has directed the results of strong messages to the regime, the most important of which is that a large sector of the Turkish people is dissatisfied with the policies of Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party."

"The results and impact of the elections have emerged in the government configuration, where Erdogan has chosen government elements that are not in his brother-in-law, as opposed to previous governments where he has held more than one position."

T/Satt.

ANHA