The determining role of the municipal election in bilateral relations

Although the Russian side claims that the visit of its head of state to Turkey will take place at the end of April - beginning of May, the ongoing processes make it difficult to believe this. In particular, while it is not difficult to guess that the tightening of sanctions by the G7 countries on February 24 was analyzed very seriously in Ankara, the probability of a positive response to the visit request of the northern neighbor is decreasing.

We can even go a little further and guess that after the death of the Russian opposition leader in the Gulag prison and the tightening of sanctions by the G7 countries, the probability of the Turkish head of state going to Sochi has also decreased.

In the situation that arose after February 16/24, the next phase of relations with Turkey will be of great importance for Russia, so the new strategies and tactics that the Kremlin will determine, as well as the responses that Turkey will give to those strategic/tactical moves, will play an important role not only in the relations between the two countries but also in regional and international developments.

What steps can Russia take against Turkey if the relations deviate from the current course? Despite the fact that it was never on the agenda in Turkey, the fact that the Russian head of state congratulated his Turkish counterpart on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his birth indicates that Moscow will try to keep relations as soft as possible.

While the result of the March 17 election in Russia is known, the possibility of defeat of the alliance headed by Mr. Erdoğan in the March 31 municipal election in Turkey is not weak at all. If the central government faces an early election in case Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, and other metropolises remain under the control of the opposition in the municipal elections, how will the Kremlin headed by Vladimir Putin react to these processes? How will this factor shape the future of Russia-Turkey relations as the gap between the political administration systems deepens in terms of attitudes toward democracy? This is the current question, and the role of democracy in Russia's March 18 scenario and Turkey's April 1 scenario can be a determining factor.

It is claimed that Ankara's pressure also played a role in the resignation of the Palestinian government within the Israel-Hamas conflict, which is of close interest to the political Islamist government. If this claim is confirmed, Mr. Erdoğan will skillfully use it during the campaign period of the municipal election.

As the election campaign heats up, it seems that the parties that were in the alliance in the May 14/28, 2023, elections but decided to go independently to the March 31 municipal election, are melting every day.

According to political communication specialist, Professor Emre Erdoğan (Cumhuriyet newspaper - February 27), the main goal of either the Kurdish-oriented DEM Party, which operates separately from the opposition alliance, or the Yeniden Refah Party, which operates independently from the ruling alliance is “to prevent Ekrem Imamoğlu and Murat Kurum from winning”.

In this context, even if the situation in the election struggle for Istanbul municipality changes in favor of the ruling party candidate one day and the opposition party candidate the next day, it is not difficult to predict that the gap between the candidates will not widen in favor of any candidate until the last days of the campaign.

The facts that the small parties will withdraw from the political scene, that the center of gravity of political Islam will gradually pass from the AKP to the Yeniden Refah Party of Fatih Erbakan, the son of Necmettin Erbakan, the teacher of Turkish political Islamists, and that there will be a demand from the society to create a party that will be represented by a completely new philosophy on the center-right can be expected among the important results of the March 31 municipal election.

As important as the multi-party elections held since 1950 are for the deepening and institutionalization of democracy in Turkey, the role of the municipal elections held since 1984 has not been less than the parliamentary elections.

This is the reason why we claim that the March 31 municipal election will play an important role in determining Turkey's relations with dictatorships and democratic countries. Furthermore, this is the seventh election in which we are witnessing the country's development of its democracy through local government bodies.