Since the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekram Imamoglu on 19 March, Turkey has been shaken by a massive political crisis. This could either be the death knell for what remains of democratic rights in a coup backed by regime-controlled courts or, after 22 years, the beginning of the end for Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic regime.
The spontaneous mass protests initiated immediately after the arrest by students at Istanbul University developed with lightning speed.
Despite a ban on demonstrations, closed metro stations, sealed-off squares, police violence and the arrest of over 1,900 students, local politicians, journalists and others, hundreds of thousands across almost the entire country were galvanised into daily protests.
Saturday’s protest rally in the Maltepe district on the Asian side of Istanbul drew huge crowds, numbering 2.2 million according to organisers from Imamoglu’s ‘Kemalist’ Republican People’s Party (CHP). ‘Everywhere is Taksim, the resistance is everywhere’, was one of the slogans echoed according to an AFP reporter (Taksim Square was the epicentre of bitter mass protests in defence of the threatened Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013).
That none of this was shown on any of Turkey’s three main TV channels shows the extent to which freedom of expression has already been sabotaged.
The arrest of Imamoglu and hundreds of others accused of being a ‘criminal network’ came days before he was due to be nominated as the CHP’s presidential candidate in the 2028 presidential election, which Erdogan had presumably planned to bring forward in order to run again without changing the constitution.
The threat to Erdogan’s rule
In such an election, despite being highly rigged, Imamoglu would stand a good chance of defeating Erdogan, whose popularity has plummeted along with the Turkish economy. With annual inflation rates of 60–70% (40% last month), a massive debt mountain and the Turkish lira falling by over 80% against the dollar since 2018, food prices, rents and harsh austerity have undermined the living standards of both Turkish workers and the middle classes across all ethnic groups.
In 2022 and 2023 in particular, this also provoked widespread strikes. Erdogan’s AKP party did manage to win the 2023 presidential election, but only narrowly, and was then dealt a stinging defeat in the local elections last March, when the opposition CHP won decisively. Not only in the big cities of Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa and Izmir and other major cities, but also in several former AKP strongholds in Anatolia.
The regime fought to remove Imamoglu’s name from the ballot, first by pressuring the management of Istanbul University to strip him of the diploma that every presidential candidate in Turkey must have. The next day, they had him arrested on old charges of insulting the election authority and new, loose charges of corruption and terror link. This is a calculated gamble by Erdogan in a desperate attempt to cling to power.
Imamoglu, who won the Istanbul elections in 2019 and again in 2023, is the most widely-supported opposition politician because of his more “popular” style and unifying rhetoric towards Kurds and other minorities. He has also called for some welfare policies such as free bread, and green infrastructure.
The fact that Erdogan has dared to strike now may be linked to Turkey’s strengthened geopolitical position. In the Middle East, with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the weakening of the Iran-Hezbollah axis, and in Europe as a pillar of NATO in the military arms race in the wake of the Ukraine war, Turkey has gained while Trump’s provocations against former allies and the disaster in Gaza draw attention elsewhere. As the Financial Times put it, “Ankara’s newfound importance to Europe’s defence, coupled with Trump’s return to the White House, may have been factors that emboldened Erdogan…to act against his chief rival”.
The question now is whether pressure can continue to build from ongoing street protests in Turkey, which Mr Erdogan dismissed as “street terror” by “fringe groups”? According to the CHP, new mass rallies are planned every Saturday across the country and every Wednesday in Istanbul to demand the release of detainees and trigger new elections.
The Turkish opposition
The apparent start of secret talks between Erdogan and Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been waging an armed struggle for Kurdish rights since 1984), is seen by many as a cunning attempt to divide the Turkish opposition.
Öcalan’s momentous call on 27 February for the PKK to both lay down its arms and dissolve itself, followed by the PKK-allied YPG in Syria’s agreement to integrate into the new Syrian state, suggests that secret talks have been held to resume the peace process that was suspended in 2015. These appear to have started with an October 2024 announcement by the Erdogan-aligned ultra-right MHP (Turkish National Movement Party) that it would swap the dismantling of the PKK for Öcalan’s release. But it is unlikely that this would be enough to drive a wedge between Kurds and others in opposition to Erdogan.
In the years following its founding in 2012, when the pro-Kurdish left-wing People’s Democratic Party (HDP) celebrated great success as the country’s third-largest party, hopes for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish question were dashed by brutal military operations both in Turkey and in Syria, politically led by the AKP and MHP.
Since 2016, more than 4,000 HDP members have been imprisoned, accused of terrorist links. More than 20 former MPs are still in prison, including male party leader Selahattin Demirtas (the party had two leaders) and more than 50 of the party’s elected mayors have been removed and replaced by Erdogan regime appointees.
The fact that, at the time of writing, the Swedish ETC journalist Joakim Medin has not yet been released and is accused of terrorist links for his depictions of the Kurdish struggle in Syria in particular is another manifestation of the same repression.
After the HDP was effectively banned, the pro-Kurdish movement founded a new, similar party, the Democracy and Equality Party (DEM), in 2023. Since the accusations now levelled against Imamoglu for terror links are almost certainly due to his openness to cooperation with this party, many expect that it will be against them when Erdogan strikes next.
At a time when democratic issues are most pressing, and the possibility of finally defeating Erdogan is presented, a clear response is needed. However, the pro-Western and liberal republicans of the CHP, but also the Dems and the leadership of Turkey’s trade unions lack a real alternative to the deep economic, social and political crisis of capitalism in the shadow of the arms race between imperialist rivals. While defending the democratic rights of all, including Imamoglu, the labour movement and left should not subordinate itself to a pro-capitalist CHP “leadership” of the protest movement. A general strike should be built to bring down Erdogan and chart a way forward for the working class.
Defeating Erdogan would be an historic victory, but insufficient on its own. In the new, stormy period that has now begun in Turkey, the necessity of a democratic socialist and revolutionary solution, which can also cater for the democratic rights of all minorities, will become increasingly apparent.
