Backfired

“If we lose Istanbul, we lose Turkey!”

This historic statement by Erdoğan places a great responsibility on the people of Istanbul who will vote today. First and foremost, it is essential that everyone goes to the polls to vote and then protects the ballot box where they cast their vote.

Let us recall the 2019 local elections. It was claimed that there was fraud in the election results, and we went to the polls twice. İmamoğlu won Istanbul twice.

The candidate chosen by Erdoğan, who lost Istanbul twice in the 2019 local elections, for the 2024 local elections has backfired.

In 2023, during the great earthquake, 45 thousand of our people lost their lives in one night. It is alleged that 150 thousand people died according to unofficial data. Following the great destruction, and while Istanbul is expecting an earthquake of the same magnitude, when the primary concern of Istanbulites is “earthquake and life safety,” the government fielded the former Minister of Environment and Urbanization, who signed the zoning amnesty, against Ekrem İmamoğlu.

Murat Kurum’s lack of familiarity with Istanbul, his confusing Büyükçekmece with Küçükçekmece, and his making gaffe after gaffe in his speeches to cover up his ignorance, revealed his inadequacy and backfired!

Following this, the government deployed its 17 ministers, who are tasked with governing the country with the principle of impartiality, to the field.

The state’s 17 ministers came to Istanbul from Ankara and campaigned for Murat Kurum in a different part of Istanbul every day. This also backfired.

Not only the ministers, but also the inclusion of Alper Gezeravcı, who went to space with the taxes of the citizens of the Republic of Turkey, in the AKP convoy in a country where poverty is deepening, backfired.

When Erdoğan applied the marginalizing, condescending language he has used against the opposition for 20 years to his own candidate, it backfired.

His sweet scolding of Murat Kurum on live broadcast, in front of cameras, as if scolding a small child, and his advice to “take care of your property,” buried Kurum on live broadcast in the words of the youth!

Murat Kurum’s stroking the face of the 74-year-old Galatasaray Club President Dursun Özbek, who is older than him, with both hands to appear sympathetic while meeting with Galatasaray executives, backfired.

THE METHOD OF ALIENATE, DIVIDE, POLARIZE BACKFIRED

Erdoğan’s Grand Istanbul Rally at Atatürk Airport backfired. Even Erdoğan saw that the rally area was not completely full and complained; he admitted, “We are used to 1.5 million people here, but today there are 650 thousand people.” In this period when unemployment and deep poverty are experienced at the highest level, Erdoğan’s raising expectations among retirees regarding increasing their income and then not even mentioning it at the Grand Istanbul Rally backfired.

The assets of the Ankara mayoral candidate, the fact that the land he owns is larger than Monaco and the Vatican, and the emergence of 600 more properties in Antalya that he hid from the public, backfired.

The dividing, segregating, and polarizing language of power that the government has been applying for 20 years backfired this time.

The voter is no longer buying this trick. The parties did not unite, but the base did. Polls revealed that in cities where the CHP has a certain vote, many CHP mayoral candidates are receiving votes far above the vote share the CHP received.

Mansur Yavaş is single-handedly doubling the existing vote share of the CHP in Ankara. Similarly, İmamoğlu is receiving far more votes in Istanbul than the CHP’s vote share on his own.

Indeed, the voter did not buy the “alienate, divide, polarize” tactic that the government has been applying for 20 years this time. There is a tendency not toward the polarizer, but toward the embracer; not toward the divider, but toward the unifier; not toward the one who favors rent-seeking, but toward the one who provides service with a social state understanding.

All the methods the government used, mobilizing all the means of the state, heart and soul, for the Istanbul elections, backfired.

Now, to the ballot box, friends…

Hoping for a fair election without fraud, lies, or tricks,

I am going to vote!