How Turkey’s Local Elections Became a Vote on Erdogan

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a fresh mandate with sweeping new powers in a double victory in parliamentary and presidential elections last summer. Now, less than a year into his five-year term, he faces a referendum of sorts on his management of the state. With the nation in an economic downturn, Erdogan’s opponents are working together against his Islamist-rooted movement in local elections March 31, threatening its hold on the capital Ankara and the commercial hub Istanbul. With the outcome uncertain, Erdogan moved to stop a slide in the currency ahead of the vote, roiling Turkey’s financial markets.

Turkey’s opposition parties rarely coordinate strategy. But this time, the second largest opposition group in parliament, the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, which stresses minority rights, opted to sit out significant municipal races beyond its stronghold in the southeast, where Turkey’s Kurdish minority is concentrated. Instead, it is supporting candidates from an opposition bloc led by the larger Republican People’s Party, or CHP. That’s led to competitive races in Ankara and Istanbul that threaten the quarter century-long hold on the two cities by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party and its predecessors.