Geopolitical Maps

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of Turkiye, just suffered the worst electoral defeat his party has seen in two decades.

His Conservative Islamist AK Parti lost control of 15 of Turkiye’s 81 provinces in a humiliating defeat, a sharp turn from his reelection just one year earlier.

On the top is a map of provinces that voted for Erdogan in 2023 and Kilicdaroglu (the leftist candidate of the democratic CH Parti) in 2023 compared with a map of which of these two parties (or their allies) won power last week on the bottom.

For the past decade of AKP power, the CHP and its allied parties have only really done well in a few areas. These included the Western facing Mediterranean costal regions (including the largest city Istanbul), the capital Ankara, and the far Eastern Kurdish-majority regions.

While for some reason Erdogan managed to regain control over a province west of Istanbul, every other province continued its loyalty to the CHP. However, many new provinces, particularly in the rural Northeast and the heavily conservative Western heartland voted for CHP governments by narrow margins.

Turkiye’s inflation has continued to soar to unprecedented levels, particularly dissatisfying the religiously conservative and rural center of Turkiye. It’s speculated many of these voters could have voted for non-AKP parties as a protest vote.

Surprisingly, the current mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Immamoglu, won a landslide reelection victory against an AKP candidate, by broadening his appeal beyond just his secular base. This contributed to the surprise CHP overall vote share.

Erdogan expressed dissatisfaction with the results, and his party decided to lay off possible constitutional amendments until 2028.