"When Turkey cannot find investment, money pours into Egypt"

This was one of the headlines, and this headline clearly states that since the start of the Hamas-Israel war, Turkey has been significantly excluded from the ceasefire between the parties and aid to Gaza.

While Egypt and Qatar assumed the role of mediation in the route determined by Washington, Turkey's move on Egypt was not enough for mediation. Washington has increased the pressure on Netanyahu to prevent the Gaza Strip from attacking the city of Rifah, while Egypt is showing strong reactions every day against the supposed Rifah operation.

As a result, Egypt has now taken on the task that Turkey took on 10 years ago: Brussels gave Cairo 7 billion euros in the first stage to prevent the new wave of refugees expected to appear from the Middle East to Afghanistan to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt. Controversies about the fate of the 3.5 billion given to Ankara in 2015 sometimes come up.

It is not difficult to see that these words are calculated for domestic politics on the eve of the elections on March 31, when the head of state Erdoğan, who could not actively intervene in the Israel-Hamas war in any way, mentioned the 1974 operation in Cyprus and talked about "capturing the whole island", causing a sharp reaction in Athens.

Despite years of close friendship, Erdoğan's "policy of gradually lowering the temperature of relations", which has distanced himself from Moscow since July of last year, showed its echo even after the elections, and unlike previous years, and despite the fact that the Russian head of state congratulated his Turkish counterpart, who was re-elected on May 28, 2023, as soon as the elections were over, Mr. Erdoğan was cautious and did not rush to congratulate.

As the municipal elections are approaching, the AKP leader and President Erdoğan never fails to introduce every "instrument" that can increase the rating. While there is no doubt that the main goal of Mr. Erdoğan, who targets not only the main opposition party but also the smallest political institutions, is the victory of his candidate for the Istanbul municipality, the direct communication established by the leader of the main opposition party, Ekrem İmamoğlu, with the voters bears its fruits every day, maybe every hour. To illustrate, public opinion polls already clearly show that half of the voters of the İYİ Party in Istanbul support İmamoğlu. Another fact is that a certain part of AKP's traditional electorate is directed towards Ekrem İmamoğlu.

Strange electoral maneuvers are being carried out: since the day it came to power, AKP, which especially accustomed its members and supporters to social assistance in Istanbul, has not been able to provide assistance through the Istanbul municipality for the past 5 years. Some of the supporters “cling to the skirts” of the candidate of the main opposition party, Ekrem İmamoğlu, and receive the assistance they want, and therefore their support for İmamoğlu is considered normal.

Two weeks ago, in a closed meeting attended by a few people, one of the founders of the AKP admitted saying that "we have accustomed the society to constantly snatch something from us." I remembered that I wrote about this situation many times and that I predicted a few years ago that this "buy-give" policy created by Mr. Erdoğan himself would one day hit the ruling party. That is, according to Anton Chekhov's famous saying, "The gun hung on the wall at the beginning of the play is fired at the end of the play."

In the last 5 years, the administration of the Istanbul municipality by the opposition party has incredibly increased the pressure made by sects, foundations, associations, religious societies, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses (I lost my breath), and finally individuals, which were unofficially financed by the municipality, on the head of state. This is one of the reasons why AKP leader and head of state Erdoğan, who has difficulty in financing them, is working day and night to win again in the Istanbul municipality.

The attractive side of the matter is that the rating of Mansur Yavaş, the candidate of the opposition party (elected in 2019), who played a major role in spreading the concept of "social municipalism" in Turkey, has increased to 60%, while the possibility of the candidate of the ruling party being elected in the race for Ankara municipality is decreasing.

A feature of the March 31 municipal election is that it will largely determine the candidates for the 2028 presidential election.

The re-election of Ekrem İmamoğlu as the mayor of Istanbul will pave the way for his candidacy for the presidency.

This is the main reason why Mr. Erdoğan told his supporters "This is my last election".

That is, if we fail to win in Istanbul this time, it will either be impossible for me to run for the presidency again, or I will be defeated.

Despite the insistence of the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahçeli, I do not believe that Mr. Erdoğan is thinking of running for the presidency again. This is also shown by the leadership race that is heating up behind the scenes in AKP.