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The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) took a significant blow in the March 2024 municipal elections, but it has since been recouping losses as opposition mayors switch sides. A total of 56 mayors from opposition parties and independents have joined the party since the elections. Currently, the AK Party holds mayoral seats in 599 out of 1,401 seats across Türkiye.
The party has won mayoral seats in 12 metropolitan municipalities, 12 city municipalities, 347 district municipalities and 170 town municipalities in the 2024 elections. Last week, nine more mayors joined the AK Party during a ceremony to mark the party’s 24th anniversary, including Özlem Çerçioğlu, a renowned and long-serving mayor for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in the western province of Aydın.
The AK Party has made a name for itself with its municipal services and has enjoyed a streak of election success in all municipal elections since the early 2000s. Yet, the 2024 elections curbed its nationwide influence slightly, especially after losing several strongholds to the CHP.
The majority of those joining the AK Party as mayors are from the New Welfare Party (YRP), which positions itself with a similar ideology to the party. The party has supported the People’s Alliance, led by the AK Party, in the 2023 general elections, although it later went its own way and fielded candidates in the 2024 municipal elections. Fourteen independent mayors have also joined the AK Party since the municipal vote. The AK Party gained seven mayors from the CHP, mostly those who fell out with the new administration of Türkiye’s oldest party, which took office after an intraparty election in November 2023. The CHP portrays itself as the exact opposite of the AK Party, although it courted several prominent figures who have been ideologically aligned with the ruling party in the past.
In the 2023 general elections, the CHP helped several former members of the AK Party win parliamentary seats, as they were nominated from CHP lists instead of running for their own parties, which had a weak chance of success. The AK Party also saw seven mayors from the Good Party (IP) joining it. The rest of the mayors switching allegiance to the AK Party were from the Felicity Party (SP), the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA).
The AK Party’s losses in the 2024 local vote are widely regarded as the electorate’s reaction to certain underperforming mayors and the party in general amid worries over the heightened cost of living. But the longstanding party hopes to recover in the next election, relying on boosting what it calls “the 1994 spirit.” The party’s founder and incumbent president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is credited with introducing a new model of municipal governance when he won the municipal elections in Türkiye’s most populated city, Istanbul, that year. Erdoğan’s accomplishments as mayor set an example for future municipalities of the AK Party. The AK Party secured successive victories in municipal elections, following in the footsteps of Erdoğan, and is credited with turning around the fortunes of most cities and districts, which had suffered from negligence in public services under the reign of mayors from opposition parties.
