The enduring power of Turkey's ballot box

A look at Turkish domestic politics since March

It occurs to me that some people find it very difficult to keep up with events in Turkey.

Many people just don’t think that Turkish domestic politics is very interesting. Basically, Erdoğan wins, the opposition loses, and a lot of complicated things happen in between. If that’s your approach, you’re going to be blindsided at some point or another.

It is with that thought that I’d like to introduce my longtime friend and colleague Hüseyin Raşit Yılmaz. HRY is that rare creature in today’s Turkey: a conservative. In another life, he’d probably be talking about Chesterton’s fence and Reinhold Niebuhr. In this one, he made his way through the Ülkü Ocakları, became a think tank researcher, and acts as an opinion shaper in the opposition-nationalist space, most recently at the Ankara-based Institute of Social Studies, where I am also a board member.

In the below piece, HRY assesses the political dynamics in play for the past few months.

My favorite part of his recent writing is the neologism he’s created to describe the compulsive need for electoral legitimacy: “sandıkseverlik”

• Sandık: literally “box,” but in political contexts, it means “ballot box.”

• -severlik: a suffix denoting affection, fondness, or even fetishization (similar to “-philia” in English or “-loving” constructions).

In the piece below, I’ve translated sandıkseverlik as “ballotophilia.” HRY makes a somewhat optimistic argument that this force is as strong as it has ever been with the Turkish public, and that it will ultimately ensure the survival of its Democracy. Unsurprisingly, I’ve heard people like Ross Douthat make similar arguments in the U.S.

But that’s enough out of me. I hope you find this piece valuable.

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Developments are unfolding in Turkey today that, had they taken place only a few years earlier, would have occupied the upper tiers of the global political agenda for a long time. The realignment occurring in the United States—and, by extension, in Europe and the wider international system—makes it increasingly difficult for Turkey’s domestic dynamics to remain bounded by national borders. The new U.S. president’s distinctive eagerness to cultivate cordial relations with authoritarian leaders, together with a wish to relieve his country of the burden of defending its allies, has created a sense of near-panic in the West over the need for a new security architecture. In that search, a scenario is gaining prominence in which Ankara—already willing to contain migratory flows at Europe’s frontier in return for modest financial compensation—might also contribute to a potential European defense arrangement that would operate without direct U.S. involvement.

On both of these critical issues for Europe, striking an accord with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is markedly easier than it once was. Turkey now lacks both a parliamentary bloc capable of blocking initiatives—as occurred in 2003, when lawmakers refused U.S. troops passage to Iraq despite Erdoğan’s support—and a political climate in which democratic checks and balances can function freely. The traditional distinction between state and government has largely vanished, and Erdoğan, who first rose to power as a champion of democracy, is attempting to subsume the entire legacy of Turkish modernization under the rubric of “national security.” Some conservative commentators regard this phase as a significant tragedy for Erdoğan’s political career. I am skeptical. Since having effectively unified all branches of power in his own person, I believe Erdoğan is acting out his political instincts more closely than he did during his early tenure.

Assessing public sentiment toward an administration that now permeates the entire state apparatus—and exercises substantial influence over the economy, the media, and civil society—reveals a picture Ankara would rather not see. The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) led by Tayyip Erdoğan, which gained 49.5 percent of the vote on 1 November 2015, 44.3 percent on 24 June 2018, and 35.6 percent on 14 May 2023, appears in the most reliable recent surveys in recent weeks to have slipped to commanding roughly 30 percent of the Turkish public’s support.

Despite losing nearly twenty points in support over the past decade, a period marked by greater centralization of executive authority, President Erdoğan has maintained his position through remarkable political skill. As the party’s support has contracted, he has built an ever-widening coalition that now brings together former rivals. Today both the Nationalist Action Party (MHP)—the country’s most established nationalist party—and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), widely viewed as the political arm of to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), seem to be aligned around his candidacy for the next elecetion. During the same period, one can hear similar statements on Erdoğan’s significance from MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, imprisoned PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, and DEM’s jailed former co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş. Such cross-cutting alliances reflect not only institutional leverage but also an exceptional aptitude for negotiation. Moreover, even with concentrated executive powers, Erdoğan has continued to place the ballot box before the electorate and to permit elections that are regarded as being broadly competitive. Though there have been significant problems here as well, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Erdoğan has a compulsive need to get the people’s approval at the ballot box. . This enabled him to lead an alliance of unlikely bedfellows and win the 2023 presidential election with 52 percent of the vote, even as his party’s share declined toward 30 percent.

The developments of recent years reflect a political reality that first took shape in 2019. From 2002 to 2019, Erdoğan was the dominant charismatic and popular figure in Turkish politics, yet he was unsettled when his party lost numerous municipalities—including the two largest cities—in the 2019 local elections. After Ekrem İmamoğlu defeated his candidate in Istanbul by a margin of only 13,000 votes, he argued that such a narrow gap compromised the result’s legitimacy and had the election repeated. In the re-run, the margin against his candidate expanded to more than 800,000 votes. By winning two consecutive contests, Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor İmamoğlu emerged onto the national stage as the architect of Erdoğan’s most significant defeat in a generation. Mansur Yavaş of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) likewise captured the capital, Ankara. Subsequent reputable polls consistently indicated that İmamoğlu or Yavaş could comfortably beat Erdoğan in a presidential election. Nonetheless, Erdoğan subtly manipulated the main-opposition leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, into thinking that he could also win a presidential election—an undeniable political success, irrespective of the ethical questions surrounding the tactics employed.

İmamoğlu’s resounding re-election as Istanbul mayor on 31 March 2024 represented a significant test for Erdoğan, who of course, had occupied the same office during his rise to power. On March 18th, 2025, University Council annulled İmamoğlu’s university diploma—a constitutional requirement for presidential candidacy—thirty-one years after his graduation; the next day he was detained and later arrested on corruption and terrorism charges. While in jail, he won his party’s presidential primary with 15 million popular votes. Surveys indicate that most citizens doubt the allegations. This is partly because the prosecution has so far failed to produce material evidence for their accusations, relying instead largely on anonymous witness statements. As a consequence, support has coalesced around İmamoğlu to a greater extent than before his arrest, suggesting the process has not unfolded as the government intended.

Voters in İstanbul’s Üsküdar district casting votes for İmamoğlu in the CHP’s presidential primary. Source: BBC Türkçe

In opinion surveys taken after İmamoğlu’s arrest, his principal intra-party rival—Ankara Metropolitan Mayor Yavaş—swiftly declared his support and began working actively to secure İmamoğlu’s presidential candidacy. Nationalist-democratic opposition parties, which together command roughly ten percent of the electorate and had previously kept their distance, likewise endorsed him and joined the mass demonstrations that began on March 19th and continued nationwide for a week. The participation of hundreds of thousands of mostly young citizens in Istanbul and Ankara signaled a public challenge that prompted evident concern in government circles. Observers widely expected that Istanbul’s administration would be brought under state control, but the protests likely made the state apparatus more cautious on this point. The police are continuing to make arrests, but the state has—for the time being at least—not taken direct control over the management of İstanbul.

Expectations of a broad policy shift remain limited. Nevertheless, as after earlier electoral setbacks, selective confidence-building measures may be pursued. One frequently cited scenario involves encouraging the new CHP chair, Özgür Özel, to distance himself from İmamoğlu—thereby lessening the latter’s influence while detained. Steps such as restricting domestic access to İmamoğlu’s social media account, relocating close aides to separate facilities, imposing trusteeship over his private company, and circulating reports on his private life, are viewed in this light. Public remarks by a prominent journalist, suggesting that matters would ease if Özel refrained from contact with İmamoğlu, and the president’s subsequent description of İmamoğlu’s circle as a “criminal organization,” illustrate the preconditions envisaged for normalization. Özel, mindful of the 2023 precedent in which more popular contenders were set aside, has so far resisted these pressures. Should that stance hold, either İmamoğlu or, alternatively, Yavaş would remain viable candidates with a strong chance of success; if both were sidelined, Özel himself could emerge as a competitive nominee.

Is it realistic to expect those who preside over a state so thoroughly personified in a single figure to relinquish authority at the ballot box? A broader historical lens is instructive here. The polity then known as the Ottoman Empire dispatched its first official student mission to Europe in 1830, adopted its inaugural constitution and parliament in 1876, and—through the appearance of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—accelerated the modernization project. The early decades of the Republic that Atatürk and his comrades founded after the War of Independence turned incremental reforms into a sustained sprint: in 1934, for example, Turkish women gained full suffrage, a right recognized in France only in 1944 and throughout Switzerland as late as 1971. Despite episodic interruptions, ballots have reflected popular will and have replaced powerful leaders since multi-party elections began in 1950, creating a durable culture of electoral legitimacy. I call this desire “sandıkseverlik,” which might be translated into English as “ballotophilia.”

Critiques of Turkey’s system are many, yet the public’s devotion to choosing its leaders is unmistakable—and manifests itself in President Erdoğan’s own, almost obsessive, drive to seek popular endorsement for his rule. The ballotophilic impulses of the public on one end, and that of the political elite on the other, function as a dual safeguard of the country’s democratic trajectory. Of the two, the non-negotiable element is the electorate’s commitment to its franchise. Even if a leader were to abandon the pursuit of electoral validation, that would not diminish citizens’ insistence on exercising their choice. Underestimating this resolve is to misread Turkey’s political future.